Double, Double, Toil, and Trouble
by lionesseyes13
Summary: For the Miracle boys, the Halloween season brings pranks, parties, changes, and costumes. A funny rather than scary multi-chapter Halloween story.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This story is rated T for language, the presence of alcohol in later chapters, and the wacky costumes and Halloween hijinks in future chapters. Everything is intended in a comedic context rather than an offensive one, but the target audience for this fic is a thirteen and over crowd.

"_Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice."—__**Inferno, **__Dante Alighieri_

Into Fire and into Ice

As far as Rob McClanahan was concerned, there was a particular circle of hell Dante had neglected to mention in his famous tome on the subject. It was called hockey practice with Herb Brooks while suffering from jet lag after a long flight back from a grueling schedule of games in Europe. Rob did not know how it felt to be thrown into a lake of fire and to be denied the freedom to move out of it, though he was certain it wasn't a remotely pleasant sensation. Still, he could say with one hundred percent confidence that hearing Herb Brooks go through the roof of a skyscraper every time a player failed to perform one of his crazy drills (which no sane person could hope to truly comprehend) to his satisfaction was a form of torture even Dante would deem too hideous to document in his epic poem. And it was a torment Rob would be enduring as soon as Herb decided the team had done enough stretching. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" should have been inscribed on the doorway of any rink Herb coached in, just as it was etched into the Gates of Hell.

At least, Rob had possessed the foresight to buoy himself up on caffeine before leaving the apartment he shared with Eric Strobel, Janny, and Steve Christoff for practice. A massive mug of black coffee should have infused him with enough energy to survive the first few drills and Herb diatribes. Beyond that, his continued existence was not assured.

"Defensemen and goalies, go down to the far end of the ice," Herb commanded brusquely, as he finished setting up two rows of eight cones spaced at irregular intervals, pointing down the ice to the opposite goal zone, where Coach Patrick was organizing more cones. "Forwards, you're up here with me."

As he team straightened out of their split positions, Herb clapped his hands together briskly."Get moving, boys. If you don't know where you're going, you don't belong on this team."

Glad that it was never too early for some verbal abuse from Herb, Rob skated over to join the knot of forwards clustering around Herb. Once all the centers and wingers were crowded around him, Herb announced, every syllable crisper than the one preceding it, "Everyone who hasn't got a rock rolling around where their brain should be realizes that you can't win a game of hockey without getting the puck any more than you can drive a car without filling the tank with gasoline. Unfortunately, getting the puck alone is no guarantee of victory. If you want to score, you have to find a way to maintain possession of the puck long enough to do so. That means stickhandling and passing—forehand and backhand—to teammates. Since most of you stickhandle as if all your fingers were just amputated and couldn't pass to save your lives, this drill will focus on those skills. You'll need a partner to complete this drill. You have a minute to find someone dumb enough to work with you starting _now."_

Reflexively, Rob glanced around, trying to catch Steve Christoff's gaze, because, at the U, the two of them had often paired up when they had a choice in partners. However, it looked as though Rizzo, who had been standing at Steve's left throughout Herb's lecture and whose policy with pick-your-partner drills boiled down to asking whoever was closest to pair with him at the first possible millisecond, had already claimed Steve.

That meant that Rob would have to pair up with someone else. Maybe Mark Johnson. They had a solid enough chemistry between them during assigned drills that Herb had decided to put them on the same line midway through the European tour, and they had become fast friends off the ice, too. Some players might have been afraid to voluntarily place themselves in a position where they could so easily be overshadowed by Mark's brilliant passing and stickhandling abilities, but Rob's experience had always been that Mark made anyone he worked with shine all the brighter and watching Mark's maneuvers was an excellent way to improve your own technique.

"Are you feeling dumb enough to work with me, Magic?" Rob asked solicitously, parroting Herb's phrasing as he twisted around Neal Broten and Eric Strobel, who had paired up in a flashback to the '79 NCAA playoffs, and came to rest beside Mark.

"Of course." Mark nudged his shoulder. "Let's be stupid together, Robbie. If we work really hard at keeping any stray thought from crossing our empty minds, we could have a real chance at being the dumbest partners."

"Let's shoot for a combined IQ of absolute zero." Rob nodded seriously. "Nobody could be stupider than that, or, if they could, I wouldn't want to think about it, though I don't want to think about anything anyway, now that I'm trying to be dumb."

"Huh?" Mark assumed an expression of exaggerated blankness and bafflement. "Too many big words for my small brain, Mac."

"What?" Rob stuck out his tongue. "Stop trying to make my head explode, Mark."

Before Mark, who was opening his mouth to respond, could say anything, Herb continued sharply, drawing triangles doubtlessly intended to represent cones on the glass boards to illustrate the drill he was about to explain, "You'll form two lines starting a foot behind the first cone. One partner goes in each line, and make sure you're standing next to your partner. The partner on the right line starts with the puck in a forehand position, shifts his stick so it's in a backhand one, and then passes the puck to his partner, who, by then, should be near the second cone. The second partner should take the pass backhanded and then give a forehand pass to the guy on the right, who should be at the third cone on his side…"

Rob listened as Herb outlined the passes and stickhandling required at every one of the sixteen cones on the way up and down the ice. On a whole, he thought that the drill sounded simple, although he had the sinking suspicion that when he tried to put the theory into practice, it would prove far more complicated in messy reality than on the neat diagram. Probably he would discover that his hands, which were jittery from too much caffeine, were outside of his control, and his body had forgotten the difference between a forehand and backhand pass, nonetheless how to transition between them swiftly and smoothly enough to appease the perpetually wrathful Herb Brooks.

"That's the drill." Herb pushed the cap back onto the marker with a click that resounded across the rink. "Any questions?"

When the mass of forwards had shaken their collective heads, Herb rapped out, "Then let's get down to business. You boys are so dismal you need all the practice you can get. What are you waiting for, huh? Line up behind those cones. If it takes you more than five seconds to line up, I'll have you skating sprints to build your speed before we start the drill."

Definitely not in the mood for an episode of Herbies to begin the day, the forwards surged toward the first two cones in a rabid rush, creating two relatively straight lines.

"Drills," muttered Pav to Bah, whom he had paired with for this drill, a fact that should have surprised nobody with more than one brain cell to rub together, since Pav and Bah had been line mates at the Duluth branch of the U and played with a synchronization that suggested they had been skating as a unit since birth.

As he settled into the left line behind Pav with Mark across from him, Rob noticed that Pav pronounced the word "drills" with the same contempt for oppression most beings would spit into the horrific term "Nazi Germany." Not that this was a particularly shocking revelation, either, because it was common knowledge on the team that Pav preferred the spontaneity of scrimmages and games to the regimentation of drills. Pav didn't approve of his creativity being in any way stifled by so-called strategy. In contrast, Rob didn't share Pav's instinctive aversion to drills. Drills were about order and fulfilling expectations: about being in the right place at the proper time and putting in a consistent effort. He could do that all day. He was _good _at that…

"Drills can be fun," Buzz, who was partners with Silky and who was standing in front of Pav, put in, sunny as ever. "Really, you just have to go into them with a positive attitude, Pav, and they can be a blast."

By way of reply, Pav lifted his shoulders in one of his patented vague shrugs. The gesture, as far as Rob could translate it, could be interpreted as argument, agreement, or a declaration that Pav had a hankering for Caesar salad for lunch.

Rolling his eyes, Rob thought that he was very grateful that both his line mates—Eric Strobel and Mark Johnson—spoke in complete sentences. Mark might be quiet, but he communicated with nouns and verbs, unlike Pav, who seemed to feel that employing both parts of speech in one of his rare attempts at using actual words in conversation was a waste of breath. Besides, once Mark was familiar with someone, his reserve fell away like a cape and he opened up to them—joking around and sharing his placid insights into situations—whereas Pav's idea of opening up probably entailed shrugging in a slightly less enigmatic fashion.

His musings were interrupted with a jolt by Herb barking at Steve and Rizzo, who were kicking off the drill, "Faster, boys. In a game, you only have time to do, not to think. Christoff, that pass was sloppier than a pig's sty! Rizzo, you can skate and pass at the same time, damn it! It's no more difficult than chewing gum and walking…"

Not bothering to lean around the forwards in front of him to see how Steve and Rizzo were botching the drill, Rob wondered for probably the millionth time since he had started playing hockey for Herb at the U what sort of career his mercurial coach might seek out if he hadn't devoted his life to making college hockey players miserable. To amuse himself while he waited for his and Mark's turn to run through the drill, Rob imagined a cover letter Herb could affix to an application.

_Dear Sir_, Herb's letter might open, _I am writing to inquire about your advert for the position of Balloon Breaker. I have a razor tongue that would do the trick neatly and bring about the wails of young people everywhere. My former charges will attest to the fact that I rarely smile, never laugh, and can steal the joy and hope from any room simply by entering and bestowing upon it my unique sense of utter doom and derision. My references in this matter are impeccable. If you have not fallen into a state of deep depression merely by reading this note, please respond to Herbert Brooks (I have a nickname, but you'll never have leave to use it) in care of the University of Minnesota Athletic Department. If you cannot be troubled to find the address on your own, you are not trying your hardest, and your shameful lack of exertion in this regard indicates you will never be anything but a failure at life because that is all you aspire to be. Sincerely, Herbert Brooks. _

"What's the joke?" Mark arched an eyebrow, as Steve and Rizzo skated to the ends of the lines, while Buzz and Silky started their run of the drill. "Is there a fly on my nose or something? Why are you grinning like that?"

"I'm just envisioning what careers Herb would be in if he weren't a coach," explained Rob quickly sotto voice, hoping that Mark wouldn't believe that he had been sneering at his teammates being reprimanded. "So far I've come up with Balloon Breaking Bastard. You may think you're going fast, but he'll tell you that you're being outpaced by snails the world over, and your balloon is shattered to smithereens just like that."

"Bubble popper," Mark contributed in a whisper, smiling. "You may believe that your slapshot is one of the marvels of the modern world, but actually your wrist movement doesn't generate sufficient momentum to get the puck in the net, so that's one of the hundred reasons you fail at hockey. Pop goes the bubble, and the suds land right in your eyes."

"Dream dasher," murmured Rob, valiantly pretending that he could not hear Herb snarling at Silky that it shouldn't take a week to travel from one cone to the next and at Buzz that his grip on the stick was so clumsy that it appeared as if he had coated his fingers in butter. "You may think you have what it takes to be an Olympic athlete, but you're deluded, because you don't and you never will. Another dream smashes against the rock that is Herb."

"Drill sergeant in the Marine Corps." Mark's eyes were shining with humor but he still kept his volume at a hushed level. "He's always inventing new, inhumane conditioning techniques, and anyone who trained under him would be more afraid of him than any enemy."

"Interrogator for the CIA." Rob snickered, determined not to be outdone in this absurdity contest. "He could look at any Commie scum for a second, spot instantly the one thing that could be said to transform them into a babbling nutcase, and then just say whatever it is. Then your callous Communist is reduce to a sobbing ball curled up in the fetal position, begging to be returned to the warm safety of a mother's womb. The whole effect would be very Freudian."

Buzz and Silky had finished the drill and were returning to the end of their lines. As Pav and Bah streaked off to perform the drill, Mark and Rob skated up to the starting cones, awaiting their turn.

Aware that they were now too close to Herb to crack jokes at his expense but also wanting to distract himself from the pressure of the upcoming drill as long as possible, Rob, casting wildly about for another topic, remarked, "It's almost Halloween."

_What a sparkling conversationalist you are_, he criticized himself mentally. _Pointing out the obvious fact that it's near Halloween. What astonishing statement will you offer as an encore? A review of the weather? An analysis of the merits of cranberry juice in keeping a person regular? I bet the world can only wait with bated breath to hear your next piercing comment. _

"Yeah." Mark nodded, dutifully holding up his end of the sagging conversation. "Maybe Bobby and I will make paper ghosts or something to hang in our bedroom. Got to get in the spirit of the holiday."

"Host a séance," Rob told him, deciding that it was the perfect opportunity for a flash of dry humor. "That would really help you get into the spirit of the holiday."

"Perhaps I will." Mark rubbed his palm along his stick, obviously eager to get on with the drill. "Normally I like to have a raucous Halloween party, but maybe this year I'll go out on a limb and host a creepy séance instead."

"Halloween parties are so passé." Rob tried to push back his cuticles and discovered that his fingers were trembling from caffeine overdose too much to master this basic act of coordination. Splendid. When he ran through the drill with Mark he would probably resemble nothing more than a nervous condition disguised as a hockey player. Herb would crucify him if he couldn't manage to stickhandle in a stickhandling exercise. "A séance would be much cooler. You should start planning it right away, or else all the most stylish Ouija boards will be taken."

Mark was denied a chance to answer as Bah and Pav returned from their run of the drill, Pav shooting the puck to Mark as he skated toward the end of the line.

Mark caught the puck forehanded and passed it backhanded toward Rob, who was streaking toward his second cone. Receiving the puck backhanded, Rob wove around his second cone and shot a forehand pass at Mark. His fingers, though still shaking like small puddings, were under his control, letting him give and receive passes however he wished…

"The legs feed the wolf," Herb shouted, his blades whisk-whisking across the ice as if to rebuke it for being there, as he glided along what felt like inches from Rob, doubtlessly to ensure he was close enough to pounce on any mistake. "The wolf is starving."

Taking a forehand pass from Mark and converting it into a backhand one, Rob glanced over his shoulder to check where Mark was, an action that prompted Herb to bark orders like General Eisenhower on D-Day.

"Don't look around for your partner, McClanahan," snarled Herb, but Rob had already sent the puck sailing toward Mark, who was streaming away from his third cone en route to his fourth. "Know where your partner is. Sense where he is without gawking. Staring around the ice like a cow chewing curd is a waste of time that's very expensive in a game."

As Mark, spinning deftly around his fourth cone, shifted Rob's backhand pass into a forehand one, Herb growled, "I know you can do that transition faster, Johnson. I've _seen _you do it faster. I don't know who you think you're fooling with that slowness, but it's not me."

Rob bit his lip to restrain himself from bursting out that Mark was the best college hockey player in the country (that was objective fact, not some subjective friendship bias kicking in), and if that wasn't good enough for Herb, he could go drown himself in one of Minnesota's ten thousand lakes. Only the knowledge that Mark detested it when he challenged Herb made him clamp his mouth shut, because he hoped to make it to noon without doing anything that distressed or irritated his center.

The drill continued with Herb's litany of reprimands and corrections as a constant background to their passing and stickhandling. Glad to be removed from under the microscope of Herb's glare for a few minutes, Rob passed the puck to Phil Verchota and then skated toward the end of the line to wait behind Neal. However, before he was halfway to his destination, there was a dull thump that echoed throughout the arena.

Whirling in the direction from whence the noise had come, Rob spotted that the source of the sound was Mark Wells, who had collapsed in an undignified heap of pads near the second cone. With a wince, Rob thought that fall was not going to feel so great on the ankle that Mark Wells had fractured during their European tour. In Herb's opinion, it was acceptable and ever admirable to perform a nosedive when completing a maneuver like the epic game-winning goal Neal Broten had scored during the NCAA final of '79, but it was totally taboo to do a faceplant and fail to finish the move.

"On your feet, Wells!" Herb barked, although the addressed had already uprighted himself. "The point of this exercise is to improve your stickhandling and passing skills, not your faceplants."

Eyes blazing, Herb cast around his audience for a victim, and Rob felt his stomach knot as his irate coach's glower fixed on him. Feeling as if he were about to be struck by lightning but was too mesmerized by the gleaming forks of electricity to try to prevent fate from reducing him to cinders, Rob gulped as Herb stated tersely, "McClanahan understands that. McClanahan will run through the drill with Verchota to show you how it's done, Wells. Then you can try to prove that you learned something by going through the exercise again with Verchota."

Rob gritted his teeth. He hated when Herb did this to him—absolutely hated it with the level of loathing the Capulets had reserved for the Montagues in _Romeo and Juliet_. At the U, it hadn't been uncommon for Herb to open a practice by making Rob and John Meredith (widely regarded as the fastest skaters on the Gophers) run through a drill as swiftly as they could, time them, reduce that time by two or three seconds, and insist that everyone on the team complete the exercise at the reduced time, repeating the drill as often as necessary to garner that outcome. It was as effective as extinguishing a fire by dumping gasoline on it for John Meredith and Rob to hold anything back in their initial run, since Herb would just force them to repeat the drill until he was satisfied they had put in their best effort. Trying to outsmart Herb was futile and frequently painful.

Now deciding that his only hope of not having to humiliate Mark Wells was to act as if he did not comprehend what was happening as if that alone would be enough to prevent it from unfolding, Rob stood perfectly still, not defying a direct order but not hastening forward to comply with an implied one either.

"Get up here, McClanahan!" Herb jabbed a finger at the first cone opposite the one Phil had returned to. "You're running through the drill again with Verchota. What are you waiting for—a personalized invitation, flowers, and a box of chocolates?"

_Actually a reprieve, thanks for asking,_ Rob thought, indulging in some internal sarcasm as he skated up, as slowly and reluctantly as he dared, to the cone Herb had indicated. As he passed Mark Wells on his journey to the cone, Rob risked shooting the other forward a sympathetic glance only to be rewarded for his compassion with a scorching glare that could have evaporated the Pacific Ocean and that clearly wished him a lifelong marriage to a girl whose breath smelled perpetually of garlic cloves.

His spine bristling, because he was not to blame for Mark Wells' clumsiness or Herb's ruthlessness, Rob reached the cone, and, when Herb blew his whistle, streaked toward the next one in his row. The passing between him and Phil did not flow as smoothly as it had between him and Mark, so Herb, was his default mood, was as far from happy as the dog days of August were from a January blizzard. Rob could feel Herb's displeasure emanating from him in waves reminiscent of the haze that radiated from sidewalks on summer afternoons when it was ninety degrees in the shade.

"Verchota, you couldn't pass to save your miserable life," exploded Herb in a towering temper as Phil fumbled a transition from forehand to backhand and sent a sloppy pass careening across the ice in Rob's vague direction. "Use your hands instead of your feet to hold your stick next time. A monkey could put your stickhandling skills to shame."

Distracted by the hilarious mental image of a chimpanzee wheeling around on the ice in hockey pads and performing all sorts of wacky stunts with a stick, Rob received backhanded a pass he should have taken forehanded and then added to the mess by sending the puck to Phil backhanded when he was supposed to do so forehanded.

"Do you know what your problem is, McClanahan?" demanded Herb in his most caustic manner as Phil caught the puck and shot it forehanded back to Rob.

_Wait; don't tell me. __**You **__are,_ Rob thought, letting his inner snide master have free reign, because snarky remarks, even if they remained confined to his own head, were a balm to embarrassing situations and wounded pride.

He focused on correctly receiving and returning Phil's pass as he wove around the last cone and started streaking back down the ice toward the line of watching and waiting forwards.

"It's that you're lazy," Herb ranted on, revealing his question had obviously been rhetorical. "You decide not to work—I see on your face exactly when you choose not to—and then you start messing up passes and losing control of your stickhandling. Practice doesn't do you any good if you don't put any effort into it. If you're going to practice, come to work."

By the time Herb had finished upbraiding him, Rob and Phil had arrived at the cones that marked the end of the drill. Longing to find a hole in the ice commodious enough to bury himself in, Rob disappeared to the back of his line.

"Magnificent effort, Mac." Mark reached across from the opposite line to slap Rob's shoulder. "Two solid drills in a row. Very nice."

"Did you just pour acid into your eyes, Magic?" Rob snorted, rolling his eyes, since if there was one thing he despised even more than failing publically it was being assured that he had done well after he had just proven he was no more competent at playing hockey than Carter was at leading a superpower. "That's the only explanation for you not seeing that pass I fucked up. I allowed myself to get distracted by Herb's yelling even though I know better, and I ended up looking like a lazy son of a bitch."

"You aren't lazy." Mark shook his head in a manner that suggested Rob should do natural selection a favor and not reproduce for fear of passing his stupidity genes onto the next generations of McClanahans. "One of the first things anyone with any observational skills whatsoever notices about you is your intensity. If you're lazy, then I'm Count Dracula."

"I had noticed your incisors were getting rather long." Rob smirked. "I hadn't wanted to say anything because I didn't feel like being ruder than normal, but now that you mention it, you do look undead."

"I hope your stupidity isn't contagious." Mark nudged Rob in the rubs.

"Actually, it is." Rob adopted an expression of exaggerated seriousness as he elbowed Mark in the ribs by way of vengeance. "I caught it from you."

"Very funny." Mark's voice was laden with irony.

"Yeah, but what isn't funny is what happened to Wellsy." As he lowered his tone to a whisper that wouldn't have been out of place in a sub rosa meeting in ancient Rome, Rob's face really assumed a somber cast. "When he fell, so did his chances of staying on the team. I mean, Herb's already been not so subtly questioning whether his playing style is the right fit for this team. That's why it's him I feel most sorry for, because, sure, it sucks that Phil and I had to repeat the drill twice in a row, but Wellsy is the one who failed the most in front of Herb although he is probably least able to afford to do so."

"Wellsy is hurt." Mark chomped on his lower lip meditatively. "Even Herb can't expect him to bounce back from an injury without making any mistakes."

"Herb delights in inventing his own standards, the more unreasonable and unattainable the better." Rob shrugged. "He never stops expecting his players to turn the impossible into the actual. That's what makes working with him hell, and I know all about hell because I read about it in Dante's _Inferno _in ninth grade English."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that terrible experience." Mark shuddered. "At least you know that if you survived an ordeal like that you'll probably make it through this practice, too."

"The _Inferno _was really quite an interesting read." Rob lifted his nose in the air. He had no idea why so many people scorned classic literary masterpieces without bothering to truly study them when they contained so much beauty and wisdom. The language might be archaic, but you could look up any word that wasn't in your vocabulary in the dictionary and own it. The plots were timeless, and any decent modern literature merely paid homage to the stories already told better in the classics. The characters were vivid, transcending their settings, and the stereotyped figure in today's bestseller was only a ghostly imitation of a great, living creature in a classic. Reading classics was both intellectually stimulating and emotionally fulfilling. "You should read it one day when you want to feel massive pangs of horror and revulsion."

"I'll stick to _Carrie _by Stephen King." Mark grinned. "It's got a gory prom and a heroine with telekinetic powers. What's not to love?"

"Um, the fact that it's probably all scary gimmicks and no thematic substance springs to mind," scoffed Rob. "I mean, what did you even learn from _Carrie_?"

"Don't bully anyone." Mark chuckled. "You never know who might have telekinetic powers, and you don't want a person like that to snap and murder you with their mind, you see."

"What a valuable lesson." Rob's lips quirked into a wry twist. "It's applicable to basically any situation."

"Oh, and what grand lesson did you learn from the _Inferno_, Professor?" Mark arched an eyebrow.

"Many things but one that is very relevant to a God forsaken situation like practice with Herb: if you go through hell long enough, you can eventually climb out into paradise, so don't give up hope even if you see a sign telling you to abandon it." Rob's eyes widened earnestly. "Of course, once you escape the mouth of hell, you have to be smart enough not to walk right back in again. It remains to be seen how clever our team is in that regard…"


	2. Chapter 2

"_People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter, you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it."-__**Carrie**__, Stephen King_

Wings off Flies

Every inch of Rob's body was bound, as though in a funeral shroud, in the thick, sticky strands that clung to the skin when he walked through a cobweb on a hike in the woods. Only this time, he hadn't stepped through the web; he was trapped in it and would never escape. Frantically, he thrashed about but his desperate throes only served to knot him more deeply in the horrible silken tapestry of the spider web. He wanted to scream but his mouth was too dry to move and his brain was too stunned to form any coherent noise.

He tried to raise his hands to tear off some of the stifling threads only to discover he could not even move them an inch. He could feel his mind beginning to go black as his circulation was cut off by the tight embrace of the cobweb, and he gazed blankly around him, grasping at his surroundings as a shipwrecked sailor might reach out for driftwood, and knowing all the while that he was going to lose his fight to remain conscious.

A gigantic spider, larger than Rob by at least a foot, scuttled down the threads of the cobweb, mouth open and ready to take a bite out of his flesh. He wouldn't die quickly. He would perish slowly and painfully as the spider gobbled him up over the course of days…

With a gasp, Rob opened his eyes to find them pierced by the strawberry and tangerine dawn rays streaming through the slits of the Venetian blinds covering the window of the bedroom he shared with Steve Christoff. His hands were balled around his blankets, which were wrapped around him like a sweaty cloak.

_I'm way too big for nightmares, damn it_, Rob chided himself, fumbling for the glass of water on his nightstand. His fingers trembling as if he were stricken with palsy, he brought the cup to his dry lips and took a sip of stale water. _What am I, a six-year-old? Will I be begging for Steve to check under my bed for monsters before I go to sleep next, or will I just insist we sleep with the closet light on so a homicidal clown doesn't burst out of it without warning and slay us both? Yeah, if I do either of those things, I wouldn't be able to blame Steve if he started hunting for a new roommate faster than a politician would drop a friend caught by the press in a hotel bed with a sheep that wasn't their spouse…_

Reassured that his fear had been battled into sufficient submission by his dose of mental sarcasm, Rob sat up in bed and banged his head against something large, black, and hairy. It was a spider the size of a tarantella suspended from the ceiling by a clear line.

He almost screamed before he realized that the spider didn't feel alive and was hanging too limply to be real. It was just a stupid Halloween prank probably brought to him free of charge by Eric. Steve was too serious to be a practical joker, and Janny hated conflict too much to trick anybody. Besides, Janny had never been one to celebrate Halloween with gusto. Janny's parents were the brand of evangelical Christians who subscribed to the ardent belief that Halloween was practically a Satanic holiday. Janny would munch on a handful of candy corns at a Halloween party, but he would do so with a guilty expression that suggested he was expecting the Devil to materialize at any second to drag him straight to Hell. Eric, however, would most likely figure that a spider prank was very creative and clever.

_Maybe one day Electric will decide that it's a very creative and clever idea to play pick-up-sticks in the middle of a four-lane highway, and I won't say anything to dissuade him of that brilliant notion,_ Rob thought as he clambered out of bed and crossed over to his desk.

Grabbing a pair of scissors from the tiny clay bowl that served as a depository for an assortment of office supplies, he returned to his bed, stood on it, and stretched up to the ceiling where the wire holding the spider was taped. He snipped down the wire and pulled the tape off the ceiling. Then he dumped the wire, tape, and spider into the trash can next to his nightstand.

All evidence of Eric's malicious prank cleared away, he went over to his dresser. Trying to be as silent as possible so as to not awaken Steve (although Steve was the sort of sound sleeper who could probably sleep through a full scale riot in the apartment without a jolt), Rob slid open the drawers, removed a set of clothes to wear while taking care not to disturb any of his other perfectly folded garments. If anyone rummaged through his drawers without permission, he didn't want that person believing he was a slob, and, anyway, if he didn't keep his clothes neatly folded in his dresser, they would get all wrinkly and someone on the street might confuse him for a hobo begging for a quarter.

Zipping up his jeans, Rob knew that if Eric could hear his thoughts the blond right-winger would shatter a rib laughing, because Eric didn't understand the importance of a tidy appearance the same way he obviously didn't comprehend that spiders were too terrifying to be a joking matter. Spiders were evil. That was etched into their jagged, multi-legged walk. That was why they ate their victims slowly over long periods of time. That was why female spiders devoured their partners in their sleep. Only unfathomably cruel creatures ate their mates instead of loving them. All female spiders were cannibalistic murderers. If that wasn't enough to make you shiver, you were, in Rob's studied opinion, a serial killer or a moron.

Ever since Rob was little, he had despised spiders. While he had always been the type to release into the wild insects he uncovered in his house, spiders had been the exception to this humane rule for as long as he could remember, he reflected as he finished tugging his cashmere sweater over his head and settling it around his chest. Whenever he saw a spider, he stamped on it whether he was inside or outside, and, when he saw them in showers in the locker room, he made sure they drowned and were washed down the drain.

Staring at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his hair, he supposed that his hatred of spiders had begun when he was four. His brother Glenn, two years his senior, had been obsessed with reading picture books about them and sharing disgusting trivia gleaned from these literary gems with Rob. Amused by Rob's revulsion to his spider facts, Glenn had dumped a bucket full of them over Rob's head one spring day while they were exploring the groves around Pleasant Lake, which was only two hundred yards from their house.

He would never forget how it felt to have them crawling all over his body, climbing through his hair and biting into his arms and legs with more fervor than bloodthirsty mosquitoes in July. He had managed to pry some of the squiggling spiders off his skin with shaking fingers, and others had fallen from him as he dashed through the trees that cast long shadows you could interpret any way you wished like trying to figure out what a cloud resembled.

Tears were flowing in salty rivulets down his cheeks by the time he had darted through the French doors separating the kitchen from the stone patio. His mom, who had been busy sprinkling confectioner sugar over the tiramisu she had baked for the Ladies' Garden Club meeting she would be hosting that afternoon on the patio, had swung around to scold him for trailing dirt all over the granite tiles she had just mopped in honor of the imminent arrival of their guests.

Her reprimand had trailed off into a shriek as she saw all the spiders clinging to him. Her face pinched as if she had just swallowed an exceptionally sour lemon, she had dragged him down the Persian carpet of the hallway, up the hard wood of the stair, and into the bathroom he shared with his brothers. There she had shoved him, fully clothed, under a jet of freezing water in the shower. The spiders had slipped from his body in waves and had drowned before they disappeared down the drain. Then the memory faded into cold water, goose bumps, and the outstretched legs of dead spiders…

Shaking his head to extract himself from the cobweb of memory that had ensnared him, Rob decided that he needed some breakfast and stepped out of his bedroom into the apartment's kitchen, shutting the door softly behind him to avoid disturbing Steve. An empty stomach could create all kinds of wild fantasies that a slice of toast or a bowl of cereal would cure. He rifled through the cabinets and refrigerator, scowling when he discovered that the former contained non-perishable in the form of canned soups and the latter held not a crumb of food or a drop of juice or milk.

"Is there any fucking food in this damn apartment?" he muttered, not sure if he was cursing because he was starving now that he had begun his quest for breakfast or because he was ticked off at himself for still being petrified of dream spiders. "Anything that even remotely resembles food?"

_Of course there isn't,_ he inwardly answered his own question with considerable bitterness as he slammed the refrigerator door closed with a satisfying thud. _You threw out any food that could spoil before we went to Europe so that we wouldn't come home to a welcoming committee of a more diverse collection of spores than exists in the Amazon. It's just as well you did, because none of the people you're residing with would have possessed the foresight to make sure our food didn't become petri dishes in an impromptu experiment on mold. After all, these are the people who haven't figured out how to run a Hoover over the carpets and who would gladly let the dust bunnies copulate under our furniture until this apartment wouldn't look out of place in a sketchy neighborhood where a toxic waste dump could be classified as urban renewal. _

Reminding himself sternly that Steve, Janny, and Eric all regarded his zeal for keeping the floors of their apartment spotless enough to be eaten off with varying degrees of horror and amusement in much the same way their casual contempt for cleanliness both appalled and aggravated him, Rob told himself that if they tolerated his eccentricities in the name of friendship, he would have to return the favor with only mild grumbling. That wouldn't stop him from hoping that one day Steve or Janny would figure out how to plug a vacuum into an outlet, though. Eric, obviously, was a lost soul doomed to spend eternity as a slob in the messes he manufactured for himself.

His stomach growled, demanding instant attention. That settled it. He was going to head down to the bakery on the corner to buy himself some coffee and pastries. He slid his fingers into his jean pockets to check that he had his keys and wallet. Then he left the apartment and proceeded down the corridor to the elevator.

He pressed the down button, hummed a strain of Mozart's Symphony Number Thirteen in F major to himself as he waited for the elevator to arrive, boarded it when it did, and shook his head as the doors clanged shut, trapping him with the canned music that was never anything decent or classical like Bach or Beethoven. It was never even country like Neil Young or the Eagles, nor was it ever pop like Queen or the Kinks. It was always just unadulterated torment to the eardrums.

Years ago, when Rob had asked his father why there was music in elevators, Dad had explained that it was intended to calm people down so they didn't get claustrophobic locked in a moving metal box. Well, the canned music in the elevator was having anything but a soothing effect on him…All he wanted to do was claw at his ears and bash his forehead against the elevator walls like the resident of some padded room at a Funny Farm. It just showed how far the arts had fallen since the Enlightenment…

The elevator finally reached the lobby, and he could leave behind its atrocious idea of music. As he stepped out of the apartment complex's revolving glass doors onto a boulevard bustling with pedestrians bearing briefcases and dour morning countenances, Rob joined the crowd headed down the sidewalk. At the next intersection, he swerved over to the Holy Cannoli Bakery with its blue-and-white striped awning and flashing neon sign blaring it was open for business.

He arrived at the door at the same time as an elderly couple with faces crinkly as rolled newspapers and clothes musky with the stench of moth balls. Deciding that he had to show respect for old people who walked instead of driving their car at a constant rate of fifteen miles per hour everywhere—including down highways, through stop signs, and into buildings (although Rob was willing to concede that the latter two incidents were not the fault of the senior citizens in so far as they could no longer see the signs or buildings)—Rob pulled open the door and gestured for them to enter the shop first.

He joined the end of the line behind the odiferous elderly couple, looking at the pastries in the glass case and the coffee options written in orange chalk on the blackboard over the cash register. He had just determined that the October special pumpkin spice latte sounded delicious enough that he would order four large ones to share with Steve, Janny, and Eric when a gust of wind heralded the appearance of another customer.

Figuring that he could entertain himself by making small talk to a stranger about sports or the news while he decided what type of scones and turnovers he wished to purchase for himself and the teammates who shared his apartment, Rob spun around to face the newcomer as he put on his bland, mingling grin.

His grin broadened into a genuine, friendly smile when he found himself facing Bah. "Hey, man," he said, punching Bah's elbow lightly. "Top of the morning."

"Good morning." Bah nodded a greeting. "Getting breakfast?"

"Yeah," confirmed Rob. "There's no food left in our apartment, because I had to toss anything that might have spoiled into the garbage before we left for Europe. One of us will have to go to the grocery store to stock up on the staples some time after practice. Oh, who am I kidding? It will probably be me who goes, since I'm the only one in my apartment who ever does anything responsible."

"Tell me about it," Bah muttered. "I'm the only one who ever vacuums in my apartment. It's like our apartment is a wildlife refuge for endangered species of dust bunnies."

"You're preaching to the choir." Rob sighed, grateful for the opportunity to air this ancient grievance. "Nobody seems to have taught Eric, Janny, or Steve how to switch on a Hoover and run it over a floor. Maybe they don't even know what the mysterious monster I haul out to gobble up the dust bunnies is."

"Perhaps." Bah's tone took on an absent quality as he removed a folded list from his jacket pocket and examined it with a furrowed brow. "Hazelnut coffee with cream and sugar for Pav and me. Wellsy will have the same minus the cream. That's easy enough to remember. Pav wants an éclair, and I'm in the mood for a cannoli, but what should I get for Wellsy?"

"He didn't tell you what he wanted before you left?" asked Rob, deciding that four peach turnovers would be delectable for him and his roommates. Now it was time to choose between the white chocolate-cranberry scones and the apple cinnamon ones.

"Nope." Bah shook his head as the line moved up a few steps as a beleaguered mother exited balancing a large cake box with two young children in tow. "He left to meet Herb at the rink before I was awake. Herb asked to skate with him this morning, and Wellsy was too afraid to refuse. Making this team is hard enough without him causing Herb to doubt his ability to tough an injury out, you know."

"I know." Rob swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. Logically, he supposed that he should feel relieved and grateful every time it became more likely that somebody who wasn't him would be axed since the roster had to be trimmed from twenty-six names down to twenty. However, such reasoning didn't take into account the fact that anyone who was cut would be a teammate whom he had played with, practiced with, ate with, competed with, and laughed with for weeks or months. He was fiercely competitive and he understood that in order to win he had to defeat others, but there were limits to his ruthlessness. He would rather support a teammate than destroy one. Unlike Herb, he possessed some semblance of compassion for humanity, while Herb had probably been the type of player who had turned into a statue when a line mate hugged him after he scored a goal because he did not understand camaraderie except as an illness he was fortuitously immune to. "Hopefully Herb doesn't wear him out too much before practice. That ankle can only take so much abuse."

"That's what worries me." Bah gnawed on his lower lip as the line crawled forward again. "I want to get him something to restore his energy when he returns from his session with Herb. What would you want after a workout like that?"

"A shot of euthanasia," Rob replied dryly, deciding that the apple cinnamon scones would be more appropriate to autumn than the white chocolate-cranberry ones.

"Very funny." Bah wrinkled his nose. "Assuming assisted suicide wasn't on the menu, what would you like?"

"A Napoleon." Rob's eyes gleamed. When his parents had taken him and his brothers to a local bakery every Sunday after church as a reward for not being total distractions to their fellow worshippers, Rob had always ordered a Napoleon. The first time he had asked for one at the age of five, Dad had warned him that he probably wouldn't care for it and maybe he should try an éclair like Scott or a cream puff like Glenn. Rob had clenched his jaw and repeated that he wanted the Napoleon, not the éclair or the cream puff. Even when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, he could spot something that was quality, know he wanted it, and refuse to give up until he had attained it. He had gotten his Napoleon, loved every bite of it, and ordered one every time his family went to the bakery. "Napoleons are positively decadent. They've got powdered sugar and cinnamon, three layers of pastry, and cream. When you bite into one, you can hear a heavenly host sing hallelujah."

"That's quite a recommendation." Bah scribbled something on his list. "I suppose I could buy Wellsy one and if he doesn't like it, I can blame you, so he'll slip arsenic into your water bottle at practice, not mine."

"Charming." Rob rolled his eyes. "No wonder I don't room with you guys. You make Steve seem as polite and dainty as Queen Elizabeth."

Before Bah could respond, the line moved upward again, and Rob was at the counter, facing a plump and cherry-cheeked woman, who beamed at him as she inquired cheerily, "Hello, and how may I help you?"

"Hi." Rob gave the grin that meant he was delighted to finally be able to get some food since the sweet aromas in the establishment had been making his stomach rumble intermittently for the past five minutes. Perhaps if he failed as a hockey player he could have a career as an instrument in an orchestra. "I'd like four of your pumpkin spice lattes please."

As the woman mixed the lattes, Rob calculated the cost of everything he planned to order and pulled a ten and a five out of his wallet.

"Anything else?" asked the woman as she returned bearing a cardboard carton filled with four paper cups.

"I'll have four of your apple cinnamon scones and four of your peach turnovers," Rob replied, and the woman reached a latex gloved hand into the glass case to transfer the pastries he had requested into a box. As she placed the box on the counter beside the lattes and rang up his order, he added, remembering his manners, "Thank you."

"Fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents, please," She glanced up from her register and held out her hand for payment.

Rob gave her the fifteen dollars, dumped the change she gave him in a tin labeled "Tips for Tuition" (since somebody should go to school off his money if he wasn't), picked up his purchases, and strode out the door, nodding a farewell to Bah before he left.

When he returned to his apartment, he found Janny, Steve, and Eric sprawled on the sofas in the common room, hair mussed from sleep, debating the merit of dispatching someone to the supermarket down the avenue for some milk and cereal.

"I can put an end to the argument, boys." With a smug smirk, Rob deposited the lattes and pastry box on the coffee table. Gesturing at the indulgences he had procured to titillate their taste buds, he finished in a grand voice, "Bon appétit. You may eat."

"Smells delicious." Janny took one of the lattes from the carton and sipped. "Tastes good, too. Sweet with a touch of spice."

"It's pumpkin spice latte." Rob grinned as he drank from his own cup. The coffee was an excellent, rich brew with just the right amount of spice and cream. He really did have wonderful taste. He could spot quality from a mile away in the dark without a flashlight. "Glad you like it."

"Pumpkin spice latte." Steve gulped from the coffee cup he had taken from the cardboard carton. "You're such a food snob, Robbie. You can't even go to a coffee shop without getting something gourmet."

"I didn't go to a coffee shop." Rob stuck up his nose. He wasn't about to apologize for knowing what was quality in life and getting it for himself and his friends. "I went to a bakery, and I got some apple cinnamon scones and peach turnovers there, too. The pastries are in the box if you'd care for them."

"Apple cinnamon scones." Steve snorted into his coffee as Eric leaned forward, tore open the pastry box, and seized a peach turnover he chomped into at once, sugar frosting forming an ivory mustache on his lips. "What is this—high tea in Buckingham Palace?"

"No." Rob's eyebrows lifted condescendingly as he scooped up a scone and nibbled on it. "If this were high tea, it would take place in the late afternoon, and tea rather than coffee would be served, as tea, believe it or not, is the traditional beverage offered at high tea. You're _so _uncultured, Stevie."

"At least I'm not a cake eater." Steve rolled his eyes. "Pity you can't say the same, Mac."

"I'm not a cake eater." Rob shook his head, thinking that he hated being called a gutless, lazy, and pampered snot. Before he had come to the U, he had never been referred to, even in a joking context, as a cake eater. Through high school, everyone he had played hockey with had been from the same affluent community that he had been raised in. Only in college had he come to a locker room comprised mostly of players from working class backgrounds, and that pattern was continuing on the Olympic team. Mostly he was used to that class gulf by now, but there were still times when the chasm made him feel alone. He knew what his parents would say if he complained to them about how much it stung like a slap on the face to be called a cake eater.

Dad would shrug and declare that it was better to be a cake eater in a gated community than an uneducated slob leaving in a dump. Mom would lower her voice to a delicate whisper, check that all the windows in the room were closed (even though the properties in North Oaks were so large that no neighbor stood a chance of successfully eavesdropping through an open window), and assure him that cake eater was just a term white trash had invented because they were jealous of people smarter and more successful than them. Then she would launch into a complaint about how Mrs. Lars of two doors down the street was lowering the real estate value of the whole community (and Mr. Lars, a CFO in St. Paul, should explain that to his bimbo wife) with her abysmal failure to color coordinate her flowers, and how maybe she would do the charitable thing by inviting Mrs. Lars to the next Ladies' Garden Club meeting to learn how to organize plants better. Rob was pretty sure he would end up nursing a black eye for the next week if he tried either of these lines of reasoning with Steve, so he went with a more playful approach.

"I don't even _like _cake that much," Rob continued, earnest as a puppy. "It's practically the worst dessert ever. Most of the time there is too much icky, overly sweet frosting to distract from the flavors and texture of the cake itself. If I must have cake, I'd prefer it with a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar instead of frosting, but pastries are fifty times superior to cake."

"So, basically, your argument for not being a cake eater is that you're too much of a snob to eat cake." Steve emitted a noise that hovered somewhere on the spectrum between a chortle and a snort.

"That's it in a nutshell, yeah." Rob scraped at his cuticles and hoped for divine intervention or a subject change.

Even if God was not disposed to offer him mercy, Janny apparently was, because he commented, "I'm going to the grocery store to stock up on some food after practice. Let me know if you want me to buy anything in particular. I want to get some carrots to make carrot soup for Wellsy. He's been looking down lately, and I'm worried about him."

"He's going to really appreciate your soup after what Herb is reportedly putting him through this morning," Rob remarked, feeling a surge of affection for Janny, who always made a Tupperware full of thick, creamy carrot soup for any teammate who seemed under-the-weather. Janny had such a warm, generous heart that it absolutely ripped Rob's apart whenever Herb tore into Janny. Janny was a reliable goaltender who got along well with all his teammates and didn't need Herb chipping away at his self-esteem all the time to keep him humble. He already had basically no ego to speak of. "I met Bah at the bakery, and he told me that Herb asked to meet with Wellsy alone at the rink this morning. I bet he's putting Wellsy through his paces as we speak."

"Herbies galore." Eric wrinkled his nose. "On a recovering fractured ankle, too. That's just indescribably cruel, isn't?"

"Yep." Steve chewed on a peach turnover. "This proves what I've always suspected about Herb: that as a kid he was the one who ripped the wings off flies but when he got older he refined his sadistic tendencies and started yanking the legs off college hockey players instead. People like Herb don't get better. They just get meaner and cleverer about their torture techniques. Don't believe for a moment Herb majored in psychology to help people. He did it to drive them to bedlam."

"Perhaps Herb is a monster, not a human." Rob sipped pensively at his latte. "He might be a sort of Frankenstein. Lord knows he's ugly enough. He studied humanity to get his psychology degree, and, in the process, he realized that he wasn't human. When he had that epiphany, he understood that he would be forever alone. That made him envious of actual people who could successfully engage in human contact. Consumed by jealousy and rage, he has sought vengeance upon innocent college hockey players ever since."

"Playing for Herb can be nothing short of traumatic." The shutters in Janny's eyes slammed shut, and, not for the first time, Rob thought that Herb had about as comprehensive a grasp on how to treat a goaltender like Janny as a toddler did of the dirty jokes in the Porter scene of _Macbeth_. "You never have a chance to build up the foundation of your confidence before he knocks it over with a bulldozer again."

"We have one another." Eric offered his most cherubic smile. "We can build one another up faster than he can knock us down, so one of us will always be standing, and, if one of us is standing, we all are, because we're all one."

Rob thought that was true—in the least mushy way possible—of him, Eric and Steve at least. All of them had been recruited to the U hockey team the same year, and they had together tried not to buckle under the weight of being labeled the best hockey class in the school's history. Everyone had expected greatness from them, but there were just kids—far from the biggest kids on the ice, too—and maybe only they understood that. They had their differences in personality and playing style, but they were united by the common cause that had brought them to the same team: the goal of winning championships. They had their spats and friendly rivalries in scoring, but they protected, supported, and inspired each other as well. When one of them was having a rough game or practice, that player could always look at the other two for a reminder to see beyond the current struggle to the shining promise of why they had come to the team in the first place. They didn't always like each other, but they were always there for one another, and, in the final analysis, that was more important.

"If Herb messes with one man, then he is messing with us all." Steve cracked his knuckles with a sound like cashews breaking in a nutcracker. "That's how it's always been. I see no reason to change that now."

"We're friends." Rob nodded, face resolute. "Even with all his mind games, Herb can't take that away from us."

An hour later, upon entering the locker room to change into their equipment, the four of them discovered what exactly Herb was taking away from Mark Wells that morning.

"Wellsy came back from his skate with Herb all angry and determined," related Bah to the stunned and silent locker room. "He told Pav and me that Herb was sending him down to the IHL, because Herb doubted that he was the right fit for this team, but he promised Pav and me that he'd be back. He swore he was going to play well enough in the minors to make Herb change his mind and bring him back here. He has to pack and arrange transportation, so if any of you want to stop by our apartment to say anything to him before he leaves, you can."

"Herb is a real son of a bitch." OC hurled his sweatshirt and jeans onto the top shelf of his locker. "Throwing a guy who busts his ass in practices and games off the team because he gets injured months before the Olympics is fucked up."

Privately, Rob doubted that Mark Wells' injury was the only reason he was being tossed off the team. Wellsy was a center on a team that had a surplus of talent in that position, especially when the number of wingers like Rob, Eric, and Steve who could be plugged into center for a couple of shifts if necessary was factored into the equation.

Worse still, Wellsy had demonstrated himself to be a stubborn center who refused to even attempt to play wing. During a game on their European circuit, Rob had overheard Herb instructing Wellsy to play right wing on the next shift. That command hadn't astonished Rob, who had heard Herb order plenty of centers to experiment with the wing position over the years. What had shocked him was Wellsy's defiant declaration that he was a center, not a winger.

Nobody ever told Herb that they could not play any position he ordered them to attempt to fill. If you were a center and he commanded you to take a stint in goal, you put on some new equipment stat and got between the pipes to do your best not to let in a hundred soft goals. When you were on Herb's team, you were whatever he told you to be. Plenty of star centers—Rob, Eric, and Steve among them—had been made to play as wingers, and Wellsy was not better than them.

In fact, Wellsy's obstinate refusal to take a stab at playing wing probably hurt his value in Herb's eyes. Herb loved options as much as a cold bastard like him could anything, so he was more likely to have a spot on his roster for a player who was volatile and creative enough to potentially be deployed in multiple positions.

Rob knew that his own space on the team would be in considerably more jeopardy, since he would be just another center scrabbling for the fourth center position not claimed by Mark, Pav, and Neal, if he hadn't taken the risk of looking like a chicken skating around with its head cut off and hopped over the boards to play left winger in the middle of a game freshman year when Herb ordered him to do so. Being left winger to Mark was rather like stumbling on a cornucopia of points, and Mark always found a way to merge with Rob's strengths while compensating for his weaknesses…No, Rob couldn't have dreamed of a better position to be in on this team.

"Herb is a bastard." Silky spat on the floor as if he were imagining their coach's face in the tiles. "I hate him. The world would be a better place if he was trampled by a rampaging rhino."

"Come on, Silky, Coach Parker can be a bit of a bastard, too," pointed out Rizzo fairly, referring to BU's hockey coach, whom, Rob gathered, embraced a traditional tough love approach as opposed to Herb's innovative tough hatred philosophy. "I know you don't want to see him trampled by a rampaging rhino."

"Don't compare Herb to Jack Parker." Folding his arms across his chest like a mummy in a cheesy horror film, Silky shot Rizzo a scathing glare as if Rizzo had just insulted Silky's father, though perhaps, in a sense, that was exactly what had happened. Silky had lost his father when he was eight—and Rob didn't enjoy thinking about the gaping hole that must have left in Silky's heart and life-so Coach Parker seemed to become surrogate father to fill that void over Silky's college years. Rob had always regarded it as an affront to his dad—to the man who had raised him, disciplined him, and provided for him since his birth—to say any coach, even one such as his high school hockey and soccer Coach Wegleitner whom he had known since childhood (because everyone in North Oaks knew one another and that was how it would always be), a father as it implied there was something his own dad wasn't doing for him. With Silky, though, it was obviously just the ultimate compliment to describe a coach as like a father. "Herb Brooks will never be a thousandth of the man or the coach Jack Parker is. Anyone who feels otherwise can go skydiving without a parachute. If I had a big problem, Coach Parker is one of the first people I'd call for help because he gives a damn about his players, but Herb is the prototypical jackass who would make his own mother sign a requisition form for water if she were dying of thirst."

"Maybe Herb's problem is unresolved Mommy issues." OC gave a roguish snicker. "Perhaps she beat him as a kid, and now he takes that shame and fury out on us."

"What an off-color joke." Rob wagged a finger in admonishment. "Child abuse wisecracks should be as automatically not funny as ones about rape."

"Clearly, you did not grow up in Charlestown." OC shrugged. "The only jokes in Charlestown are off-color ones."

"Thanks for the tourist guide." Rob's mouth twitched wryly. "If I ever am crazy enough to get the urge to visit there, please bind me in a straitjacket and place me in a nuthouse so that I can enjoy the relative safety and sanity of my new neighborhood as compared to Charlestown."


	3. Chapter 3

"_What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?"—Mary Shelley, __**Frankenstein**_

Determined Heart

"Today we're practicing two-on-one rushes," Herb announced, voice as hard as cement, once he had decided that the team was sufficiently limber from its stretching. "Coach Patrick will be managing the forwards at the far bench, and I'll be taking the defensemen over here."

Herb paused long enough to jab his left index finger at the nearer bench, and then finished, glaring around at his assembled players as if they were a knot of convicted felons trying to flee from a high-security federal penitentiary, "This practice I want you all to stop skating like you've got five pound farts on your heads. Now, move it. Get over to those benches, boys."

Racing with the other forwards to the far bench and putting an extra burst of speed in his stride just to ensure that he was near the front of the pack of centers and wingers because being in the rear was like having a "kick me" sign only Herb could read taped to his back, Rob wasn't surprised to hear Herb bark at Silky, who apparently was bringing up the rear as usual, "When I said to move it, I was talking to you, too, Silky. Hurry it up! At this rate, I bet your rush looks more like a crawl. Are you a slug or a hockey player?"

"I'm not a slug," muttered Silky mutinously under his breath as the stream of forwards flowed over the boards and crashed onto the bench. "I wish _he _was, though. Then I could pour salt on him and watch him shrivel to death."

"You sound like a raving psycho, Silky." Rizzo clapped the other BU winger on the shoulder. "Could you go one day without making scary death threats before noon?"

"Sure I could." Silky scowled. "If Herb had the common decency to schedule some practices in the afternoon, that is. I save my most terrifying death threats for him, you know."

"I know." Chortling, Rizzo delivered another slap to Silky's shoulder. "We all know that by now, I assure you."

"You might not have to issue too many death threats today, Silky." Mark grinned. "We have Coach Patrick today instead of Herb."

Mark sounded as excited by this prospect as a kindergartener in a candy shop with pockets exploding with coins. Obviously, he appreciated Coach Patrick's style, which was defined by gentle encouragement and helmet pats. Of course, he wasn't the only one who preferred Coach Patrick's mild-mannered approach to Herb's sharp-tongued and loud-mouthed one.

There were even times when Rob counted himself among that group. After Herb ripped into him for what seemed the millionth time in one practice for some minor error, he would long for Coach Patrick to sidle up behind him, place a soft hand on his shoulder, and offer a quiet assurance that he had done something else right—even if it was so minuscule that it would not be spotted by the human eye without the aid of a microscope. Unfortunately for him, at least, there were other times when the last thing he wanted after messing up on the ice was a pat on the back or a reassuring murmur from Coach Patrick. In those moments, he was convinced that Herb's searing rants and icy indifference were somehow less condemning than Coach Patrick's whispered compliments. At the wrong second, Coach Patrick's praise could feel more like a burning slap across the face than any of Herb's heated diatribes or frigid ignoring of a player who had proved to be a failure.

Perhaps, after years of playing under Herb, Rob had evolved to the point where he could no longer trust a coach who always had something positive to say about even the most dreadfully botched maneuver. Maybe that was why if he fell on the ice he would, if he were being completely honest with himself, have preferred Herb growling at him to get up on his feet before a zamboni was brought out to run him over to Coach Patrick assuring him he had made a marvelous hustle before slipping into a nosedive. He didn't want praise he hadn't earned. It made his cheeks blaze with humiliation, his ears ache with lies, his stomach churn with guilt, and his intestines curl with disgust. Nothing made him more of a failure than being reduced to accepting like alms compliments he didn't deserve to receive.

Back in high school, Coach Wegleitner had grasped that. He had always sensed when Rob was beating himself up on the bench after an excruciatingly bad shift—replaying over and over with cruel clarity the fumbled pass or sloppy shot—and had clapped Rob on the shoulder, telling him in a tone as crisp and comforting as new blades slicing through fresh ice that he would do better next shift. That was all the reassurance Rob ever wanted: the promise of a chance to redeem himself and the competitive opportunity to improve his abysmal performance. He didn't need anyone to deny his mistakes because he wasn't completely neurotic; he just wanted to know that he wasn't in exile because of them.

Coach Wegleitner, since he had known Rob since elementary school when he used to come over to the Wegleitner house to kick a soccer ball on the front lawn or build incredible Lego engineering feats in the den with the coach's son Todd, was the coach who had cared about Rob the most. Meanwhile, Herb with his cold, keen eyes that could read the mind and pierce the soul was probably the coach understood Rob the most, but his knowledge was all detached and clinical. Coach Wegleitner had always provided whatever Rob wanted as a player—reassurance, independence, or responsibility—while Herb never failed to offer whatever Rob needed to succeed—mostly goading, endless challenges, and moving the goalposts whenever Rob thought that he might finally have scored in the impossible game of impressing Herb Brooks. That was why Coach Wegleitner might have been Rob's favorite coach, but Herb was the best one he had ever had and probably would ever have. Rob would have bet all the money in his savings account that Herb would be perfectly happy with that state of affairs. To Herb, coaching wasn't a popularity contest, and Rob often thought that it was fortunate for him that it wasn't. After all, if it were a popularity contest, Herb would have a snowball's chance in hell of winning that competition.

As if Mark's words had summoned him, Coach Patrick materialized behind them on the bench, clutching a sheet of lined paper in his right hand. "Settle down, boys," he commanded absently, studying the loose leaf and giving a satisfied nod at whatever strategy he had mapped out for their two-on-one rushes.

Once the forwards and wingers had quieted down, Coach Patrick said, "Okay, I'm going to announce your starting partners now, so please listen closely, everyone, because I'd rather not have to repeat myself. Silky, you're with Phil. Neal, you'll be working with Dave. Steve, you pair with Rizzo. Buzz and Bah, you'll be partners. Mac—" Rob, who had been waiting for his name to crop up in the list Coach Patrick was reeling off, sat up straighter, expecting to be paired with Eric Strobel or Mark Johnson—"I want you to team up with Pav for now."

_Have my ears suddenly developed a very active imagination?_ Rob wondered. _Or did Coach Patrick really say that he wants me to pair with Pav? Pav almost never partners with anyone except Buzz and Bah, since nobody else ever has a clue what Pav will do next. He's brilliant, of course, but his genius isn't one that I can comprehend. I'm a by-the-book, strategic sort of player, and he's a think-out-of-the-box, bounce- off-the-walls type. We'll be lucky if we don't ram into each other in the first two seconds and break one another's wrists or something. _

With an exertion of willpower, Rob bit his lip to keep such sentiments to himself as Coach Patrick finished announcing the partners, concluding, "Mark, you're with Eric. That's it, guys. Any questions?"

_Yeah, may I have a hookah of whatever strong stuff you were smoking when you put Pav and me together for this drill? _Rob thought, as his palm shot into the air. _It might help me think creatively enough to work effectively with Pav, you see. It's all for the sport, not for the buzz, I swear, Coach. Also, I'll paint you a picture almost as colorful and confusing as Van Gogh's Starry Night absolutely free if you accept this awesome offer now. _

"Yes, Robbie?" Coach Patrick arched an eyebrow at him.

"I just wanted to—uh—" Rob hesitated, searching his vocabulary banks for an appropriately non-accusatory word. He knew that, because of his stubbornness and sarcasm, he wasn't near the top of Coach Patrick's list of favorite players (that honor belonged to silent, skilled players like Mark and Pav, and Rob wasn't jealous, but he could acknowledge reality), and he recognized that, ever since he could talk, he had possessed the not-always-useful knack of speaking offensively without necessarily intending to do so.

He still remembered that time in second grade before Columbus Day when Miss Paterson had asked Nate Blackwell in the row in front of Rob what Christopher Columbus was famous for. Nate had dutifully recited that Christopher Columbus had sailed the ocean blue in 1492, daring to believe that the world was not flat but round, and discovered America. Rob, who had read in a small chapter book he had borrowed from the children's section of North Oaks' library about Native Americans crossing a land bridge from modern Russia to present-day Alaska and migrating over millennia to fill the continents of North and South America, developing civilizations (some as complex as the Incan and Mayan) in the process, could not refrain from bursting out that Nate's answer was totally wrong. Miss Paterson had frowned at him, reminding him pointedly to raise his hand if he had a question.

Jaw clenching, Rob had obediently thrown his fist in the air. When Miss Paterson had called on him, he had insisted that Columbus had not found America because entire tribes had already been living all over the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus' crew had boarded the _Nina_, the _Pinta_, and the _Santa Maria_. The Native American who first walked across the land bridge from Russia to Alaska, he had argued, was the one who had really discovered America, not Columbus. This reasoning had prompted a frown matching the one on her mouth to coalesce on Miss Paterson's high forehead, and she had warned him that wasn't a question.

Chin lifting, Rob had raised his hand again. When Miss Paterson, looking at him as if he were a brown stain on white khakis that no amount of bleach could clean, had called on him again, he had asked how it was possible to discover a land that thousands of people were already living upon, because wasn't that like claiming to have invented the car after stumbling across a highway. There had been several amused titters from his classmates, and maybe that more than anything else had caused Miss Paterson to snap, her lips a pale, thin line, for him to stop being insolent and sit in the time-out desk in the back of the room until the bell rang for recess.

Rob had hated being banished to the back corner like a bad kid (because he was stubborn, but he tried to be good so Mommy and Daddy would be proud and happy). When he was in the time-out desk, he hadn't been able to answer any questions, and the competition of answering questions correctly faster than anyone else in the class was what made school fun. Worse still, he had thought, biting his lip against the urge to cry, it wasn't fair for him to be exiled like this. All he had done was ask a question. A smart question that had shown how stupid Miss Paterson and Nate Blackwell were. Together those two idiots hadn't been as clever as he was, and he was the one in the seat of shame. He had been punished for being right, not for being wrong.

It had been the sheer injustice of that more than any fear of being in trouble with his parents for being naughty at school that made him burst into tears as soon as he entered the kitchen at home with a note for Mom to sign about the so-called disturbance he had made in class. Once he had related his sob story of being banished for speaking the truth, Mom had stroked his hair, given him a glass of creamy milk and a plate of the warm chocolate chip cookies she had just removed from the oven, and told him that he was so smart but he had to learn to be as clever about how he spoke as he was about what he said. Rob hadn't understood this remark and hadn't particularly wanted to, so he had focused on nibbling his cookies and sipping his milk.

However, he had understood even if he still hadn't particularly wanted to hours later when his father returned home from doing whatever defense attorneys did all day (probably sitting around arguing with one another, Rob had always supposed when he was little) and Dad had ordered him to write an apology letter to Miss Paterson for being rude. Rob's first bitter attempts at composing this epistle had consisted of him lampooning her as effectively as he could under the guise of an apology, expressing that he was sorry that she was so ignorant about the discovery of her own country and so petty that she couldn't admit that she was wrong.

Only when he had overheard Dad using his office phone to explain to Miss Paterson that, as their name indicated, the Native Americans truly were the first people to discover the Americas and surely she would be clarifying for anyone who might have been confused by her lesson that Columbus was the first European to land in America had he started to feel like justice might be satisfied. Still he hadn't wanted to write an apologetic note to Miss Paterson, because if Dad knew that she was wrong, he shouldn't be making Rob grovel about saying he was sorry in a letter. It wasn't fair at all, Rob had decided, drowning in his own resentment, and Dad, being a lawyer, should have known that.

When Dad had checked on his letter's progress only to pronounce it not funny and completely unacceptable, Rob had vented a small portion of his rapidly rising rage by shredding the note to smithereens and dumping them on the floor. Sternly, Dad had told him to pick up the mess he had made and that he wouldn't be allowed to have friends over for a week if he didn't finish an appropriate apology letter that night. A week had seemed like an eternity to Rob at his young age, so he had utterly snapped. Normally he was good with words (he was always in the advanced reading circle in his class and he always got A's in writing just like Glenn had even if he wasn't as smart as Glenn), but he had abruptly lost his ability to articulate anything but the most basic word of defiance, so he had screamed out "No, no, no, no," in endless waves, stamping his foot on the floor for emphasis.

When Dad had reached for him, he had fully expected to be tugged over his father's knee for a spanking (and he had supposed that he deserved one for his rebellious fit), so he had been shocked into silence when his dad had pulled him into a warm, strong hug. Once Rob had quieted down, Dad explained that he wasn't being punished for sharing his thoughts—he would never be punished for sharing his thoughts—but for how he had expressed them. Lifting his index finger as he always did when he was establishing an important rule Rob was expected to obey, Dad had stated that Rob was allowed to argue but he wasn't permitted to be disrespectful when he did so. If he was impolite, Dad had ruled, then he would have to apologize for his rudeness.

Since that night in second grade, Rob had, for the most part, sincerely tried to abide by that rule, even though, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the arguing clause came much more naturally to him than the respectful one. Still, he did try, because he wasn't a bad person, and he hoped that he wasn't a totally rude one, either. He was just stubborn to the point of bullishness sometimes and born with a sarcastic tongue that inclined more toward bluntness than tact.

Because of Dad's rule, Rob was glad when his groping around his vocabulary banks for a non-confrontational verb that suited the context was successful, and he could continue, "Verify that you wished for me to work with Pav, Coach."

Verify was a perfectly professional verb to use, he told himself, because people asked to verify names, dates, and numbers all the time in the business world. Although his word choice was, in this case, above reproach, he was still a little afraid that Coach Patrick might assume from his query that he hadn't been paying attention and be miffed. If it were Herb, Rob would never have dared to risk looking like a fool by asking Herb to repeat who he was paired with, but with Coach Patrick, he figured it was at least worth checking that he was really intended to be partnered with Pav, and Coach Patrick hadn't accidentally read off his list wrong.

"Yes, Mac, I want you and Pav to start out by working together." Coach Patrick gave a slight smile that suggested he knew exactly what Rob was thinking and that made Rob contemplate whether Herb had taught the team's assistant coach how to read minds. Merciful Lord, Rob really prayed that wasn't the case. It was horrible enough having one coach who could see exactly where your mind would break just by looking into your eyes. "I'm certain you'll do very well together."

_So nice to know that you have faith in my abilities, and I hope you'll be just as flattered to hear that I'm sure you're madder than a hatter, since Pav and I are more of a match made in hell than one made in heaven_, Rob thought. Then, rebuking himself severely for going into this exercise with a poor attitude that was likely to result in failure rather than success, he moved along the bench to sit beside his new, reserved partner.

He would have to take a positive stance toward things that he could not change, so to bolster his confidence, he reminded himself, _You're used to pairing with all sorts of different players at the U for games and practices. Sure, Pav seems like a hard nut to crack with his shell of shrugs and silence, but, if you put your mind to it, you can forge enough of a bond with him to successfully run through some drills. Just be your most insightful and intelligent. It will be an exhilarating challenge for your brain and your willpower. _

"Hey, Pav," he said, grinning as he slipped onto the bench between Pav and Buzz and gave Pav a light punch on the arm.

In response to this friendly greeting, Pav merely gave a small nod of acknowledgement. _Ah, _Rob thought, already feeling temporarily stymied by Pav's insistence on communicating without words as much as possible, _we're off to a rollicking start, Pav and me. No doubt we'll be declaring ourselves brothers in all but blood and whispering our most scandalous secrets to each other by sunset. _

"It's great that we have an opportunity to work together like this," he went on after taking a few seconds to regroup from the rebuff of his first effort to forge a connection. After all, he wasn't about to give up the challenge of understanding someone as eccentric and close-mouthed as Pav after only one lousy attempt. "If Coach Patrick thinks we'll make good partners, we'll do an awesome job."

"Hmm." Pav fixed a fathomless stare that Rob could not have hoped to interpret with even the aid of a UN translator on his partner. "Doesn't matter what he thinks. Matters what we think."

_Wham—that was the sound of another one of my conversational gambits crashing to the ground_, Rob observed inwardly. Telling himself that he would not be daunted by even the most unusual responses from his partner, he piped in his most cheery manner, "That's what I'm telling you: that I think we'll do a wonderful job."

Once again, Pav only nodded, and Rob couldn't determine whether the gesture was intended as a deliberate snub of his capabilities—a subtle indication that Pav was not enthused by the prospect of working with Rob because he was not at all confident that Rob could perform well in the upcoming drill—or if Pav was just oblivious to the fact that social niceties dictated that he should reply with an assurance that he, too, thought that they would do a magnificent job.

Deciding to presume the latter and assume the best of his partner, Rob bit his lip as he reflected on his next approach to solving the Pav Puzzle. Like Mark, Pav was the quiet type, and Rob remembered that he had been successful in getting Mark to open up to him when he went out of his way to ask Mark on the bench before drills and scrimmages what Mark would do in any given scenario and reacted with genuine interest to these insights. That was how Rob had learned that Mark always had a brilliant hockey tactic brewing in his brain, but he wouldn't waste his breath sharing it unless he had some evidence that somebody would listen to it. Rob had known that Mark really trusted him when he began talking about hockey strategy without any prompting from Rob.

Wondering if a similar tactic might prove effective with Pav, Rob asked, "Got a plan for our two-on-one rush, huh?"

Pav shrugged, as if to assert that until the possible became the actual, planning for it was nothing more than a distraction and a waste of energy better devoted to more entertaining pursuits.

"No, seriously," persisted Rob, because, even if Pav didn't need a plan to perform a two-on-one-rush, he did, and he wanted to create one with his partner. "Pav, I want to know what drill you think we should use for this two-on-one rush."

"Oh." Pav shrugged as though to indicate by this that drills stole all the excitement from hockey and he wasn't going to dignify them by integrating them into his free-wheeling game.

"'Oh' isn't a drill." Pinching the tip of his earlobe, Rob thought that, at this rate, his daily quota of patience would be sapped before he exchanged a few more sentences with Pav. "It's just an interjection that doesn't answer my question at all."

"We'll charge down the ice with the puck, pass the puck, dodge the defenseman, and score." Pav's voice was the put-out one beings adopted when they had been forced to state the obvious to an insistent dimwit.

Swallowing with the bitter taste of wormwood a retort that he had a brain not a boulder in his skull, Rob replied as diplomatically as he could, "Look, Pav, I'm not sure you understood my question. Obviously, we want to do what you just said, because that's the whole point of a two-on-one-rush, but I'm concerned with the specific details that will allow us to bring about the generality that you just outlined. That's why we need to figure out what drill we'll be using for our two-on-one-rush."

"Drills are dumb." Pav gave a disgusted and dismissive headshake. "We improvise."

"Right." Rob gritted his teeth, and told himself that he was only about to strategically retreat, not surrender, because, next time he was paired with Pav, he would continue the fight to solve the Pav Puzzle armed with more knowledge and experience. That would assure his victory. For now, he would just have to respect Pav the Challenge for being a competition that was so difficult to beat, even if he was aggravated at Pav the Person for being so recalcitrant with his vague gestures and noncommittal responses. "I'll just spend our remaining time together on the bench practicing my face-palm, shall I?"

Before Pav could answer (if he was even going to perform as social a behavior as that), Coach Patrick came up behind them, saying, "Pav and Mac, take this rush."

Hopping over the boards alongside Pav, Rob decided that he would let Pav take the lead on this exercise and try to adapt to whatever the other forward seemed to be doing at any given second. Pav streaked up the ice, controlling the puck with his stick, and Rob glided alongside him on the left. When they neared center ice, Pav sent the puck sailing toward Rob, who received the pass.

Rammer, who was playing defense for this rush, streaked up to confront Rob as he and Pav skated out of the neutral zone. Rob stickhandled, shifting the puck from forehand to backhand and back again, as he twisted around Rammer. Making himself a nuisance again, Rammer had positioned his bulk between the goal and Rob.

Hating every second of this impromptu two-on-one rush, Rob feinted a shot on goal and sent the puck careening toward Pav. Rammer attempted an interception, but, sleek and silent, Pav skated into take the pass. Pav wove toward the net, but found his progress halted by Rammer planting himself squarely in his path.

Not knowing what he was doing because this was not a drill covered in any strategy session, Rob pushed toward the left side of the net, skating in behind Rammer. Pav twirled around and sent a backhanded pass streaming across the ice toward Rob. The puck slid under Rammer's leg neatly onto Rob's stick, and he fired the puck as fast and as hard as he could high on Jim's glove side.

For a second, he hoped the puck would land in the net, but the next instant, his dreams of beginning practice with some solid scoring were dashed when the puck disappeared into Jim's glove. _There will be plenty of other chances to score before practice ends_, he pointed out, refusing to let himself get too discouraged. _Maybe next time try high on the stick side or low on the glove side. _

"Well, we did get a shot on goal past the defenseman, and that's the most important thing about a two-on-one rush," Rob remarked, eyeing Pav as they returned to the bench, and wishing that he could read his partner's expressions better. He couldn't tell whether Pav was irked that they hadn't scored or was pleased because their improvisation had been sufficiently stimulating. "Now, with a three-on-one rush, it could have been dangerous in a real game if we hadn't scored. With a three-on-one rush during things like the penalty kill, there is the chance that you won't be able to fall back in time to help defend your own net if you can't get the puck into your opponent's and you end up relinquishing possession of the puck to them. Not scoring on a two-on-one rush isn't normally a disaster waiting to happen, though, so we did just fine, don't you think?"

"Got in some good passes." Pav shrugged as they climbed over the boards onto the bench. "Fun."

As Rob and Pav sipped from their water bottles, Coach Patrick strode along behind the bench toward them. Coach Patrick would want to evaluate their performance, of course. Reflecting on the general sense of confusion he had been operating under throughout the exercise with Pav, Rob could only hope that he hadn't looked like a complete idiot out on the ice. At least if he had, he comforted himself grimly, he would have provided his teammates with some quality entertainment. That would be great if he ever wanted to audition for the role of team clown.

"Beautiful passing and smooth skating, Pav." Coach Patrick tapped Pav affectionately on the helmet. "I almost didn't see you come into deny Rammer that interception until you were already there. Excellent work."

Pav glanced up at Coach Patrick long enough to offer a quick smile and then went back to gulping water from his bottle.

"Nice job, too, Mac," added Coach Patrick. "You did exactly what I wanted you to do."

"Feel like an idiot?" Rob guessed, wrinkling his nose.

"No." Coach Patrick chuckled. "Improvise. You needed to see that, as wonderful a planner as you are, you _are _capable of improvising."

Rolling his eyes, Rob thought that if he never had to hear the word "improvise" or any of its equally nefarious variations again, he would throw a wild party to celebrate.

"All right. You learned your lesson. Tell Eric that I told you to switch places with him." Coach Patrick pointed down the bench to where Eric was sitting next to Mark. "Go on."

Excited by the promise of running through drills with someone he was more in sync with, Rob snatched up his water bottle and hurried down the bench to pass his message along to Eric before Coach Patrick had a chance to change his mind.

"Beat it, Electric." Rob pounded Eric on the back as he reached Eric and Mark, who had been chatting as they took their water break. "Coach Patrick wants you to work with Pav now."

"Sounds like a blast." Eric picked up his water bottle and moved along the bench to go engage in bursts of artistic spontaneity with Pav, tossing over his shoulder, "See you around, Magic. Good working with you."

"What are you planning for the next rush?" Rob asked, slipping into the spot that Eric had just vacated, glad to plot strategy with a player who did not exist on a higher plane of reality and communicate on a totally different wavelength. He and Mark had distinct personalities but they both were intensely focused on games and practices as well as forever ready to discuss hockey tactics with one another. That was part of the reason they were becoming better line mates every day, Rob surmised.

"I'm thinking that we should try to tailor our strategy to whoever we'll be facing." Mark's vivid blue eyes appraised the opposing bench. "Herb sent OC out against Eric and me last time, so I feel like he'll probably be pitting us against Bill. How about we go with the pincers? Bill hates that maneuver, doesn't he?"

"Yep, he does, but I happen to love the pincers maneuver." Rob's eyes shone like polished pennies as he smirked.

"I know that." Mark nudged Rob's arm. "I've got to keep my left-winger happy, don't I?"

"Definitely." Rob elbowed Mark in the ribs by way of retaliation. "That's a mandatory part of your job description."

Before Mark could respond to this assertion, Coach Patrick appeared behind them on the bench and instructed them to take the next rush. As he clambered over the boards alongside Mark, Rob saw that Mark had been right: they were indeed facing Bill.

Adrenaline thudded through Rob's veins. Bill was always a cunning and fierce opponent in drills—a real challenge to beat—and it was time to perform one of his favorite maneuvers with the best center he had ever played with. Practice didn't get much better than this.

Mark took the puck and streaked down the ice, veering toward the right, while Rob fanned out to the left. A few inches from center ice, Mark slid the puck to Rob, who fired it back rapidly. Mark maintained possession of the puck until he was practically on top of Bill. Then he launched it toward Rob, who accepted the pass and stickhandled to keep the puck and Bill's focus on him as Mark glided over to the net.

Twisting abruptly back from Bill, Rob fired a backhand pass at Mark. Rob glanced over his shoulder in time to see Mark's shot slam into the crossbar and ricochet into the net high on Jim's glove side. Whistling softly in admiration, he thought that Mark's goal looked as smooth as always. To an outsider, it might have seemed like pure luck, but, knowing Mark as he did, Rob suspected that the goal had been deliberate.

"Nice goal." Rob pounded Mark on the back enthusiastically as the other forward skated with him back toward the bench. "That could be a perfect textbook example. It was just vintage Magic."

"I was set up well." As modest as a dandelion, Mark shrugged as they hopped over the boards onto the bench, though his eyes were as satisfied as a bride's when she tossed her bouquet after a wedding that had unfolded just as she had envisioned it ever since childhood. "It's all in the set up, you know."

"Great goal, Mark." Coach Patrick arrived to pat Mark on the helmet and squeeze Rob's shoulder. "Excellent teamwork, both of you. From the beginning, you had a plan, you stuck to it, and you made it work. Keep that up."

"If we do, will you lay off the bone-crushing grip?" muttered Rob, yanking out of Coach Patrick's clasp, his threshold for compliments from coaches obviously already exceeded. Praise from teammates was fine, since that was just encouragement, but compliments from coaches not accompanied by some amount of criticism was coddling, and there were few things in the world Rob despised more than being coddled.

"I'll leave you two to enjoy your water break." With that clipped comment, Coach Patrick moved down the bench to pour out more praise on other players.

"Did that shoulder squeeze really hurt?" Mark wanted to know as soon as Coach Patrick was out of earshot.

"Through shoulder pads?" Rob scoffed, thinking that nothing short of a speeding sixteen-wheeler would inflict much damage through the protective layer of shoulder padding. "You've got to be shitting me, Magic. You just used up your dumb question of the day, and it's not even noon yet. That's a new stupid record for you."

"Well, you hurt Coach Patrick's feelings." Over his water bottle, Mark locked a reproving glance upon Rob's face. "Why couldn't you just accept his gesture of affection without implying that he was abusing you? Because you have to know that he would never hurt you."

"Of course." Rob snorted. "He's too busy coddling everyone to try to cause anyone any pain except, unfortunately for him, his constant praising when he should be coaching is quite agonizing for me."

"He _is_ coaching." Mark's chin rose. "Maybe his style doesn't work for you, but for some of us, it is just fine, thanks. I'm sorry if you don't think he's a good coach, but perhaps if you considered things from his perspective, you'd see that you aren't exactly the easiest player to coach because of your strong-willed disposition."

"I wish that people would stop spreading the vicious rumor that strong-willed people are difficult to handle." Rob's jaw clenched. While Mark might have spent his youth listening to adults gush about how obedient he was and how he made parenting look so easy that even a crack addict could do it without breaking a sweat, Rob's early years had gone by in a blur of neighbors commenting in faux helpful and sympathetic tones to his parents that he was in constant need of a good spanking. He hadn't been anyone's idea of a simple child to rear. If Mom wanted him to put on a jacket, she couldn't just tell him to put one on, because that would result in him racing out of the house without a coat, since he would rather freeze than obey an order without a confrontation as protracted as the War of the Roses. Instead, she had to give him a choice—asking whether he would prefer to wear his red jacket or his blue one—or tell him what the temperature was and let him decide for himself that putting on a coat would be a prudent decision. If Dad wanted Rob to clean up the toys he had strewn all over the den, he would have to make it a challenge—a competitive game to increase the speed in which Rob could perform this task—instead of just ordering him to pick up the mess, because that command would just make him fling more objects all over the carpet.

As a little boy, Rob had never failed to be astonished by the fear that would inevitably flash on any adult's face the second he asked one of his inconvenient questions or responded to an order with anything less than immediate compliance. All the neighbors had believed that he was a brat just because he never failed to know exactly what he wanted and act as if he were confident that he would attain it. The vapid neighbors didn't understand that he wasn't a brat because brats expected to get whatever they wanted merely because they wanted it; Rob wasn't like that: he expected and relished working hard to achieve whatever he desired, using every bit of his determination and cleverness to transform his vision of how things ought to be into reality. Only when he had built up a reputation as a star athlete and an honors student had the neighbors really warmed up to him, presumably so they could live vicariously through his awards and achievements.

He had been born with the sense that nothing could stop his fearless heart and stone will once he had resolved to go after some goal. That was why when he had read John Milton's _Paradise Lost _in tenth grade English he had been horrified to discover that he could relate to the tragic figure that was Satan declaiming that it was better for his ambition and pride to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Like that of Milton's Satan, Rob's soul was a burning one that would sooner fight a battle he was pre-destined to lose than fall to his knees in surrender. It wasn't necessarily admirable, but it was him, pure and simple.

"If you want a stubborn person to do something, don't command him to do it, because that will just result in him describing to you in graphic detail how you can use your butt as folder for your order," Rob went on in a matter-of-fact voice. "Instead just make it a challenge, and the strong-willed person's competitive urges will ensure that the task is completed in record time and with high-quality. If you're in a position of authority and you want to build up a strong-willed person's self-esteem, just give that person choices that show you have faith in that being's reasoning powers, instead of condescending to that person with a million little compliments about everything from their breathing patterns up. Coaching a stubborn person should be easy as long as you remember the Two C's: challenges and choices."

"Whatever you say." Mark sounded politely dubious. "Maybe one day you'll be a coach, and you'll have a player as strong-willed as you to be a guinea pig in an experiment on the validity of your Two C's theory."

"Oh, I'd be a marvelous coach." All sarcasm, Rob rolled his eyes. "If I listen really hard, I can just hear me now, old Man McClanahan yammering on about face-offs and how a player hasn't experienced a truly grueling conditioning exercise until he has run up a hill both ways after practice."

"What will you say to the you of the future who points out that, logically, you can't run up the hill both ways?" snickered Mark.

"I would say that when you are running the hill in full equipment after practice you're so exhausted that you honestly have no clue which way is up and which way is down anymore." Rob smirked. "Therefore, you're running up the hill both ways. Then I would pull out the choice part of my Two C's theory and tell the snide little player that he can either take my word for it or experience the truth of it for himself. That will shut him up quite well if he really is a future me, because I'm stubborn, Magic, but I'm not stupid."

"You aren't stupid, but you're too smart for your own good." Laughing, Mark jabbed Rob in the ribs. "Admit it, you'd rather run your mouth and have to run your legs, too, than drop an argument like a hot potato just because you were told to be quiet. Then you'd return from your nightmare of a conditioning exercise insisting that it had been a pleasant walk in the park. That's precisely why you are so impossible to coach."


	4. Chapter 4

"_What though the field be lost? All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield."-John Milton, __**Paradise Lost**_

All is Not Lost

"Whatever shall we have for lunch?" Rob asked Steve after practice as they stared into their only full kitchen cabinet, which contained a stockpile of soup large enough to satisfy any sick person. "Soup or more soup? The options are simply stupefying."

"Yeah, the ramifications of picking tomato over cream of mushroom could resound until the crack of doom." All irony, Steve snorted. "Anyway, I'd sooner have the tomato soup over the cream of mushroom. Mushrooms are fungi, and I just can't taste beyond that disgusting fact when I eat them."

"You're such a picky eater." Rolling his eyes, Rob removed two cans of tomato soup from the cabinet and deposited them on the counter. As he yanked the lids off first one can then the other, he grunted, "Mushrooms have a nice, complex texture. It's not fair to discriminate against them when they are otherwise excellent food just on the basis that they are fungi, you know. Very politically incorrect."

"Whatever." Steve shrugged as Rob emptied the tomato soup cans into a pot on the stove, switched on the fan over the stove, and turned the dial controlling the element the pan was on to a low setting to wait for the soup to simmer. "I don't trust your idea of good food, Mac. Your family is rolling in the dough, and with all that money, you guys choose to eat slugs. I mean, if I wanted to eat slugs, I could dig them out of the dirt myself for free."

Rob smiled, recalling the Christmas party at his house he had invited Steve to last winter. The entire extravaganza as organized by his mother and the coordinator in Minneapolis whom she always hired to ensure that the event unfolded as faultlessly as possible had been French inspired, which resulted in quiche and escargot as the hors d'oeuvres. He and Steve had been sitting on the puffy, upholstered parlor divan (which Rob had never liked as much as the calmingly cool leather furniture in the den, because the parlor sofa never felt any less stiff no matter how many times he slid into it) that practically forced perfect posture on its occupants, while Steve gobbled his way through a silver tray of escargot on the mahogany coffee table.

Midway through his fifth escargot, Steve had commented on how delicious they were and asked why Rob wasn't having any. Rob had glanced around to ascertain that all within earshot were too engrossed with their own chit-chat to eavesdrop on his conversation because it would be a major faux pas if one of the hostess' sons were to be overheard grousing about the quality of the appetizers, and then wrinkled his nose, explaining that escargot was snails, and he would sooner starve to death than eat snails.

Steve had nearly choked on the escargot he was swallowing before he protested that Rob had to be serving him a load of steaming bullshit. In response, Rob had merely observed with a wry smirk that escargot being snails was too crazy for him to make up even under the influence of champagne and was a textbook example of truth being stranger than fiction.

His cheeks fading to the ashen, Steve said that he couldn't believe he had eaten slugs. Then, ignoring Rob's correction that it was snails rather than slugs he had consumed, Steve had bolted down the hallway to the bathroom without any attempt at excusing himself…

"Escargot is snails." Rob chuckled. "Not slugs. I told you that before."

"Same difference." Steve waved a dismissive palm. "I also wasn't listening to your pompous corrections, because I was a bit preoccupied with not barfing all over your carpet. You could be more grateful."

"Not when I have to suffer severe secondhand embarrassment hearing how hopelessly misinformed you are." Rob clapped Steve on the shoulder by way of assurance that his mockery was all in good fun. "It's easy to see the difference between a snail and a slug. A snail has a shell, and a slug doesn't. It doesn't take a degree in zoology to spot that."

Before Steve could retort, there was a clinking music of keys jingling in the lock to their apartment door. A second later, Janny and Eric stepped into the apartment, balancing paper bags overflowing with groceries under their arms.

"Holy smoke." Steve whistled as Eric and Janny dumped the jammed grocery bags on the kitchen floor. "Did you two buy the whole damn store?"

"It'd be smart if we did," countered Eric, transferring a gallon of milk and a carton of orange juice to the refrigerator. "You'd probably eat it all within the week, Stevie."

"That's not an accurate representation of my eating habits," Steve argued, putting yogurt, butter, and cold cuts into the fridge. "I mean, while you and Janny were out, I didn't eat all the soup, and soup was the only food in this apartment."

"Yep, he showed a hell of a lot of restraint while you two were gone." Rob snickered as he realized that the soup was finished heating and switched off the stove fan. Standing on tiptoe to reach the cabinet where the dishes were stored (because kitchens were never designed for the convenience of the vertically-challenged like him), he grabbed four bowls, which he proceeded to pour the warm soup into. Then, opening the cutlery drawer, he pulled out four spoons and placed them in the soup bowls. "Of course, he might not deserve quite as much credit as he thinks for not being a total pig, since half the soup was cream of mushroom, and by his own admission, he's biased against eating fungi."

"Speaking of soup," remarked Janny, snatching up a bowl and beginning to shovel spoonfuls of soup into his mouth, "I don't suppose I'll be making my carrot soup for Wellsy, after all. It's a rather unwieldy farewell present, and if there is one certainty about his leaving, it's that he'll be traveling. I wouldn't want to give him something that would make his travel more difficult than it has to be. That'd be rude."

"Would Wellsy even want a farewell gift?" Eric's forehead furrowed as he blew on a spoonful of soup to cool it and probably sent spit particles flying everywhere, including into Rob's lunch. "Didn't Bah say in the locker room that Wellsy is convinced he'll be back before the Olympics, or did my ears get very creative and invent their own conversation?"

"I heard the same thing you did, and I don't think my ears plagiarized the story yours came up with, because my ears have honor," answered Steve, waving his spoon around for emphasis. "Wellsy does believe he'll be back, so the kindest thing would probably be supporting his delusion that he'll be in the Olympics so this good-bye is a temporary, not a permanent, farewell."

"If he'll be back, I was born yesterday and have never laced up skates before," muttered Rob derisively between slurps of soup. "Him being on the Olympic team is nothing more than a pipe dream."

"Hey now!" Eric's eyes expanded in reproof. "That's not a very sensitive thing to say about someone else's dream. Dreams have to be a bit unrealistic, or else there would be nothing magical or motivational about them, and people would be nothing without their dreams. Anything is possible if you dream it hard enough."

"Sure, and anyone can be President as long as they are a white, rich Christian male with no visible tattoos." Rob clicked his tongue to vent his impatience with Eric's idealism. "Stop drinking the American Dream Kool-Aid the teaching handed you in kindergarten during snack time, and begin thinking for yourself, Electric."

"I am thinking for myself." Eric tucked a stray strand of blond hair that had flopped into his eyes behind his earlobe. "What do you have against kindergarten, anyhow? I can't take you seriously when you talk like you've got some weird anti-kindergarten vendetta going on over there."

"I'm not an anti-kindergarten zealot. In fact, if anything, I'm a pro-kindergarten fanatic, because it's the foundation of everything you need to become a productive member of society instead of jail bait." As he continued, Rob counted off his main points on his fingers, "When you're told to stop tugging on Susie's ponytail or you'll be sent to timeout, you are taught not to be a sexual pervert. When you're ordered to stop fighting with Tommy, you learn not to commit assault. When you're reminded to share the toys with the other children, you're educated in the art of paying your taxes to fund Social Security and pensions of other citizens."

"Oh, I remember the lessons on taxes." Steve's lips quirked. "Now that you mention it, I think those lectures took place right after story time."

"Anyway," went on Rob, ignoring Steve's quip, "what I mean now that I'm done being a smartass is that having goals is only the first step in achieving success. If you want to accomplish things but still feel the thrill of challenge and victory, you have to check that your goals are both attainable and difficult. To be successful, you don't just need goals; you need the right goals."

"I don't see how you can know what's attainable before you've done it." Eric shook his head. "You may think you're a prophet or something, Mac, but to me, you just seem like a pessimist."

"Well, to me, you just seem totally irrational," riposted Rob, thinking that in the years since he had met Eric this fundamental difference in perception had probably been the single largest source of friction in their friendship.

Eric, who inhabited a higher realm Rob mentally termed as "fantasy land," was easygoing, because he apparently subscribed to the dubious theory that each day contained an infinite amount of time. Thus, to him, there was never any need to stress over doing anything immediately, as, in Eric Strobel's brain, everything could be done later or not at all. On a practical level, this translated into Eric running perpetually late, at least from Rob's perspective. From Eric's viewpoint, he was never running late, since there was an infinite amount of time ahead.

In contrast, Rob operated in the real world under the constraints of the clock. He believed that there were only twenty four hours in a day, and, consequently, if he sincerely intended to fulfill a specific task in a given day—vacuum the carpet or fill the tank with gasoline—then at some point during that day he had to take concrete steps in the direction of fetching the vacuum from the closet or driving to the gas station.

To Rob, "right now" meant "immediately"; to Eric, it translated into "later." To Rob, "I'll do it today" meant "At some time in the current day, I'll do it," but to Eric, it equaled, "Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, but, to be honest, probably not." To Rob, "at 7 p.m." meant at approximately 7 p.m., while to Eric it expressed nothing whatsoever, because time was infinite, and therefore, all but meaningless.

"You don't know how to plan long-term," Rob added, shooting Eric his most acerbic glare. "Actually, you don't even know how to plan for the short-term. That's why you couldn't be punctual to save your fat ass. No wonder you don't see what's so ridiculous about Wellsy's delusion of making the Olympic team. It's the sort of fantasy you'd develop yourself."

"Explain why his fantasy can't come true then." Eric arched an eyebrow. "I'm all ears."

"If you insist, I'll oblige." Rob scraped the last of the tomato soup from the sides of his bowl with his spoon. "To break down my inexorable and compelling logic, I'll start with the premise we can all agree on that, whether we like it or not, Herb's Olympic roster can ultimately only have twenty names on it. That means twelve forwards: four centers, four left wingers, and four right wingers. Wellsy is a center on a team glutted with them, so that's already a black mark against him as far as the odds of making the team go. Mark Johnson is a lock, because if he isn't on this team we can all kiss any medal aspirations adieu. That's the first line center position gone. Neal Broten is a playmaker who is no slouch in the scoring or speed departments, so we can safely assume that he'll remain center for the second line. Pav is the brain for the scoring monster that is the Conehead line—the one who orchestrates all that insane crap they do on ice—so he's pretty much guaranteed a third center spot. That leaves Wellsy, Cox, and Dave Christian vying for the fourth line center position. Wellsy is a solid center, but Christian can go faster and Cox is a better goal scorer, so there is no reason for Herb to pick Wellsy over either of them. Personally, I suspect that Herb is going to try Christian on right wing, and if Christian adapts well, Christian will probably steal Silky's spot, since Herb hates how slow Silky is. I think, in the end, we'll have Verchota, Cox, and Christian on the fourth line with Silky and Wellsy being the odd men out. Tough luck on the both of them and all that sympathetic jazz, but that's how I envision this all panning out right now."

"You're so callous sometimes, Robbie." Eric gnawed on a fingernail. "I don't want either Wellsy or Silky to be gone."

"I wasn't aware this conversation was about whom I wanted kicked off this team." Sticking his nose in the air because he didn't want Wellsy or Silky gone either and he was miffed that Eric would imply that he did, Rob crossed over to the sink to rinse his bowl and spoon. "I thought we were discussing who Herb was most likely to ax. Guess we were talking past one another for the millionth time today, Eric."

"We do have to prepare ourselves for cuts, Electric," Steve put in. "Cuts are part of competing at this level. We don't have to like them, but we've got to deal with them."

"You can't ever be ready for what Herb is going to do next, because you can't predict the unpredictable." Janny shook his head. "With Herb, you can't prepare yourself for things. You can only deal with them once they've happened."

"Well, this is jolly conversation." Eric indulged in an uncharacteristic bout of sarcasm before announcing, "I'm going up to visit Wellsy in his apartment to speak with him before he leaves."

"I'll come, too," chorused Steve, Janny, and Rob in three part harmony.

"Okay." Eric leveled a warning stare on each of them. "No yammering on about how he has no more shot of making this roster than a cow does, though. He needs encouragement, not you bunch of killjoys doubting his abilities."

"You don't need to tell me that, Electric," said Janny, sounding almost as if he had been stung by a scorpion's tail, while they trailed out of the kitchen, through their common room, and out of their apartment door, locking it behind them. "I would never kick another guy when he's down. That's just not cool, man."

"And I've got some social skills," Steve added indignantly, as they walked down the hallway to the elevator bank, where he pressed the up arrow. "I'm not going to be a jerk to someone who basically just got kicked off the team."

"And I've got some friends," remarked Rob, boarding along with his companions the empty elevator that had just arrived with a heraldic ding. "I know how to behave."

"Sure you do." Eric's eyes gleamed with mischief, as the metallic doors clanged shut, and the iron box hurtled them upward. "But only because your friends tell you how to behave."

"Remind me again why we're friends," retorted Rob, not willing to let this bit of banter go unchallenged. "Every time you open your big mouth I forget why."

"Because I'm chill." Chuckling, Eric nudged Rob's shoulder, as the elevator came to a halt, and the exited, heading down the corridor to Wellsy's apartment. "And you're Mr. Intensity. Opposites attract, and all that good stuff."

"Maybe I should learn to chill out." Rob rolled his eyes, as they stopped outside the apartment, and Janny knocked on the door. "Then you wouldn't bug me constantly."

Before Eric could respond to this assertion, the door opened, revealing Pav. Stepping aside to admit them, Pav gave a slight not that could have been a gesture of welcome or might just have been a private expression of agreement with some thought he had just had which he planned to keep confined to his mind even if a herd of wild horses attempted to tug it out of him.

Following the sound of Wellsy's vehement voice, they found his room easily, and entered just in time to hear him finish with a palpable mutiny what had plainly been a gripping yarn, "Then I stopped and spat at the bastard's skates. I told him in no uncertain terms that I don't play games, and I was going to be on this team—that I'm going to be back. After that, I just skated off before he could say anything else, because I would go to hell before I would let that son of a bitch have the last word."

"You never know what Herb's going to do next," chirped Neal from his perch on the windowsill beside Dave Christian. "He's like the ultimate poker player, and you never can tell what wild card he might be hiding up his sleeve. I remember one time after I had just joined the Gophers he called me aside after practice, and I thought that he was going to chew me out and then spit me out again, because that's all I ever heard he did to his players, but he just wanted to assure me that I was going to fit right in at the U with all my high school heroes. Herb can surprise you in good ways sometimes, so, with him, all hope is never really lost."

Rob couldn't contain a tiny grin at Neal's rambling. When Neal had first come to the U, he had—impossible as his interminable babble now made it to imagine—been as shy as a closed rosebud. In practice and in the locker room, he had not said much, instead gawking at Steve, Eric, and Rob with an adulation that suggested they were conquering warriors returning to Rome in a triumph. He hadn't noticed how often Steve, Eric, and Rob would pause in drills or scrimmages just to watch his passing and shooting in awe of what he could do with the puck.

Then, a few weeks into his time at the U, Neal had apparently mustered the courage to actually speak to them without them addressing him first, and then promptly began chattering until he was blue in the cheeks from oxygen deprivation about how he had admired everything they had done on the ice in high school and how he was happy as a pig in fresh mud playing hockey with them. The only way to dam this river of praise was to invite Neal out to pizza to keep his mouth busy with all that chewing. After what felt like a hundred meat lover's pies, Neal had finally stopped with the giddy hero worship and started with the exuberant teasing and pranking.

Rob was rather offended, though, that Herb had deemed it necessary to assure Neal that he was welcome on the Gophers, because none of the players—even the most vicious grinders on the fourth line—would have tried to make the prodigy from Roseau feel uncomfortable. Hazing had never been a part of their team culture. There was joking of the verbal and practical varieties on the ice and off it, but never anything malicious. Nobody on the team ever deliberately hurt any other member, and all the locker room leaders would have put a stop to any upperclassman who attempted to get his jollies by bullying a freshman.

"It's not over yet, Wellsy," Bill commented bracingly from the desk chair he was wedged onto next to Phil. "There's still months to go before Herb announces his roster. That's plenty of time for him to change his mind and bring you back up here."

"We'll be on a line again before you know it," contributed Phil, speaking as soon as Bill stopped with the flawless synchronization of best friends everywhere. "I can feel it, and I've got a brilliantly honed line sense."

"Everything is going to be all right." Buzz gave the serene smile that meant no matter how bumpy the ride of life got, he intended to enjoy every mile and soak in each gorgeous view. "It's going to work out for every one of us in the end, you betcha."

Biting his lip to keep his skepticism and pessimism to himself as Eric had commanded, Rob doubted very much that Buzz's optimistic proclamation would prove to be accurate, since he could do the math controlling their destinies. Twenty would be named to the Olympic team: two goalies, six defenseman, and twelve forwards. Six agonizing cuts—amputations from the body of their team—would whittle them down to the requisite number. Everything would be about subtraction, not addition, and each subtraction would sting like acid on a gaping would, but every one would have to happen to reach the proper solution—the number twenty. Mathematics dictated their fate, and they couldn't all escape its icy scythe, no matter what Buzz stated on the contrary.

"I'm going to fly to Flint on Friday," Wellsy related in a resolute tone. "I'll start playing for the Generals on Saturday. That's when I begin showing Herb again that he needs me on this team, and he was wrong as an iceberg in the fucking Sahara to send me away."

"We'll have a Halloween party," exclaimed Rizzo, pounding Wellsy on the shoulder, and Rob noted inwardly that only Rizzo could bill a farewell party as a Halloween one. "On Thursday evening in the apartment I share with OC and Silky. It'll be a blast."

"Great. I'll provide the entertainment," Mark piped up, juggling a circle of three pairs of socks he had been about to tuck into a pocket of Wellsy's suitcase. "Mike Eaves and I perfected a whole juggling show at the '78 World Championships when we were rooming together to keep boredom at bay."

"What else did you do to get the adrenaline thudding in the veins?" teased Rob, lifting an eyebrow. "Did you tightrope out the window? How about trapeze from the ceiling fan? Did you do that, too?"

"Of course." Mark added another sock to his juggling routine. "We had a regular circus going on in our hotel room. We even had a giant lion we procured on the black market that we managed to tame. We could get him to leap through hoops of fire when we whipped him hard enough, but we didn't think Customs would allow us to bring him home on the plane, so we had to leave him in the closet. I just hope that he didn't maul the maid when she came in to clean the room after we left."

"Speaking of the circus, we should all dress in wild costumes for the Halloween party." Rizzo thrust his fists in the air with gusto. "We'll divide into groups and wear costumes based on popular movies. The group that has the best costumes will be treated to a night of drunken revelry at the bar by all the losing groups. It'll be a riot."


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: All the costumes chosen for the team's Halloween party are from movies that were either among the top grossing films of the 1970's or the ones that were most critically acclaimed. Any comments made about _Star Wars _pertain only to the first film since that was the only one that had been released as of October of 1979. This chapter also marks the point where this story becomes truly rated PG-13 since alcoholism and cross-dressing in a comical light come into play. Please remember that all jokes are in good fun and not meant to offend anyone. That being said, sit back and enjoy the chapter, ladies and gentlemen.

"_Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,_

_Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,_

_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools_

_The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!_

_Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player_

_That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,_

_And then is heard no more. It is a tale _

_Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,_

_Signifying nothing." –William Shakespeare, __**Macbeth**_

Sound and Fury

"We'll have five teams of four," Rizzo announced after performing a quick headcount. "Going around the room, we'll just count off to five, and that's how we'll know what team we're on. O.C., you start."

"One." O.C. raised his fists in mock jubilation. "I'm the first one, which makes me the best one."

"Nah, second is the best, and third is the one with the hairy chest." Silky, sitting on O.C.'s right, elbowed O.C. in the ribs and then reeled off primly, "Two."

"Three." Eric grinned. "At least I medaled."

"Four." Steve shrugged. "Honorable mention."

"Five," said Janny, who was right next to Rob, and left it at that.

"One with O.C." Rob rolled his eyes. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, my guardian angel has a vicious sense of humor."

The counting continued around the circle for another minute or so until everyone had a number. Very much attuned to discovering who his allies in the upcoming competition would be, Rob paid particular attention to who his new teammates were, and he was satisfied. O.C., Mark Johnson, Phil Verchota, and Rob himself had the makings for a successful team. O.C. was charismatic, though Rob would sooner have all his teeth pulled than admit that aloud, so he would likely garner lots of votes just based on sheer personality. Phil could probably scare anyone into voting for him, Mark's nickname was Magic for a reason, and Rob himself was a fierce competitor always ready to work as hard as necessary to win. As long as everybody involved put forth their best efforts, the four of them had a solid shot at being victorious…

"And I'm four," Rizzo concluded, finishing the counting circle. "Now we have to decide what movies we're going to use as inspiration for our costumes."

"_Grease_," suggested Bob Suter. "Think of all the hair gel that could be used."

"Great idea." A broad beam splitting his cheeks from ear to ear, Rizzo bobbed his head enthusiastically. "Anyone else have any suggestions?"

"_Superman_," Neal chimed in, his slender frame quivering like a guitar string under a tuning fork in his excitement. "Gotta love the capes and colors. Gotta go all out in dressing up like those heroes and villains. _Superman _would spark the most awesome costumes. We have to use _Superman _as one of the movies, guys, I'm telling you."

"Excellent. We'll have _Superman _as another one of our movies." Rizzo clapped his palms together as soon as Neal's _Superman _stream evaporated. "What should we have as our third movie?"

"How about _The Godfather_?" put in Phil, smirking. "Who wouldn't kill to dress and talk like a member of the Mafia?"

"You're an idiot, but we'll go with your idea, because stupid can be funny sometimes." Rizzo guffawed as he carried on the friendly insult war that he and Phil perpetually waged against each other, Phil having the advantage in numbers of abusive terms, and Rizzo processing the high ground where volume was concerned. "Any more ideas? Don't be shy, folks. No matter what you say, it can't be dumber than what Phil just shared with the whole class."

"We should do _Rocky_." O.C. pressed the fingers of his right hand against the heel of his left one until the knuckles cracked like popcorn in a kettle. "Best sports movie ever made, because it's all about punching people."

"What am I going to do with a thug like you?" Rizzo shook his head in exaggerated despair. "All right. One more idea, everyone. Speak now or forever hold your peace.'

"Why not _Star Wars_?" asked Buzz with his trademark gentle grin. "It's got some great props like lightsabers, masks, and cloaks that would make wearing a lot of costumes based on that movie really fun, I bet."

"_Star Wars _will be the last movie, then," Rizzo proclaimed. "Now, I'll just write the movie titles on five different slips of paper, drop them into a hat, and have one person from each team pull a piece from the hat to tell them what movie their group will be assigned."

"Here's a hat you can use." Wellsy tossed a baseball cap from his suitcase at Rizzo.

"You're a rock, Wellsy." Rizzo smiled his thanks as he caught the hat, and then glanced inquiringly around the company. "I don't suppose anyone has got pen and paper? Or pencil and paper? I'm not picky about what I write with, you see."

"I've got my pocket planner." Rob reached into his jeans pocket and whipped out the smaller and more portable of the two agendas that permitted him to organize his busy life and fulfill his manifold obligations without collapsing in a heap of confusion about where he was supposed to be and when. "Give me a moment, Rizzo, and I'll have you looked after, don't worry."

"Yeah, he's got his pocket planner, of course. He never goes anywhere, even the bathroom, without it, because that just wouldn't be responsible." Steve assumed his most snide manner, as Rob flipped to the back of his agenda, where a dozen blank pages for note-taking were inserted. "Never fear, for the pocket planner is near."

"Did I mention my burning desire to roast you alive on a spit over a flaming fire?" muttered Rob, writing the movie titles in his neat cursive on one of the blank sheets at the end of his planner.

"Nope." Steve shook his head, as Rob ripped the page out of the agenda, tore it into four even pieces with a movie title on each, and dumped the slips into the waiting cap. "We normally reserve our mutual verbal abuse session for eight in the evening. Shit, you're such a walking disaster that even a pocket planner can't help you keep track of your schedule."

"Thanks, Mac," cut in Rizzo, as usual taking the fun out of every argument before Rob could retort. Bringing the baseball hat over to Mark, Rizzo went on, all heartiness, "Pick for team one, Magic. I'm sure you'll bring your lucky touch to this as you do to everything else."

Obediently, Mark slid his hand into the cap and removed it a second later with a piece of paper between his fingers, which he unfolded to read aloud, "_Star Wars_."

"Wonderful choice. You and your teammates will have an out-of-this-world experience with that one." Chortling, Rizzo gave Mark's shoulder an energetic pound, and then, bouncing on the balls of his feet with every step, moved across the circle to extend the cap to Rammer, exclaiming cheerily, "Your turn to be the hand of fate, Rammer. Tell us what destiny has in store for team two."

With an eye roll to indicate how unimpressed he was by Rizzo's chronic excess of exuberance, Rammer stretched his hand into the hat and pulled out a paper, which he glanced at before announcing, "_Grease_."

"That's a slick one." Rizzo clapped Rammer on the back before hurrying around the circle to thrust the cap at Kenny Morrow. "Why don't you tell us what's in team three's future, Ken?"

"Sure thing." Ken took a sheet of paper out of the hat, looked down at it, and then continued, "_Superman_. My team will be doing _Superman_."

"Then you'll just have to hope there's no kryptonite around." Chuckling at his own wisecrack, Rizzo came over to Wellsy, asking with exaggerated formality, "Will you do the honors for team five, Wellsy?"

On a shrug, Wellsy reached into the cap, removed a slip of paper, and read aloud, "_Rocky_."

"May the road not be too rough and rocky for your team." All smiles, Rizzo strode over to Bah, ordering as he shoved the hat in Bah's direction, "Choose well for team four, Bah, because that's the team I'm on, and I want to do well in this competition."

"There's no choice involved." Bah snorted as he pulled out the last piece of paper. "There's only one title left."

"Don't be a spoilsport." Rizzo waved a dismissive palm. "Get on with reading out that title, or I'll do it for you."

"We'll be doing _The Godfather_," proclaimed Bah from the paper. "What a shocker. Hopefully, nobody's ticker has stopped."

"Time for me to channel my Italian immigrant ancestry." Exploding with excitement, Rizzo rubbed his palms together. "All right, everybody. Each group pick a corner to plan strategy in, and no eavesdropping on other groups, since cheaters take all the fun out of friendly competition."

The circle divided and reformed into clusters of four at each of the room's corners with one team remaining in the middle.

"_Star Wars _is a fine film to get, because it's simply bursting with iconic characters," remarked Rob, drumming his fingernails against one another pensively as soon as his teammates had adjusted themselves in the corner they had claimed. "There's Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader…"

He trailed off, trying to think of another distinctive male character to use for their fourth costume.

"And Princess Leia." O.C.'s lips quirked into his quarter moon smile. "Don't go forgetting her, Mac, since that's sexist."

"I'm not being a sexist bastard." Rob wrinkled his nose as if he had just detected the unsavory odor of rancid milk. "I'm being practical. Princess Leia is a lady, and I assumed that none of us were so gender-confused that we wanted to dress up as a woman."

"Real men confident in their masculinity aren't afraid to get in touch with their feminine side by sashaying around in a nice silk gown every once in awhile." O.C.'s eyes glittered in an expression perfectly poised between a challenge and a taunt.

"Speaking from experience, are you?" Rob arched an eyebrow as his mouth twisted into a sneer. "Feel free to share the sordid details of your wild, cross-dressing alternative lifestyle, O.C., and we'll try to be very accepting of diversity."

"When people think of _Star Wars_ they envision Princess Leia's cinnamon buns hairdo," observed O.C. in the tone of someone explaining basic arithmetic to a person who showed zero potential of ever becoming a mathematical wizard. "If one of us doesn't dress up as her, our team's costumes will be judged seriously deficient, and we'll have a snowball's chance in hell of winning this competition. Conversely, if one of us dresses up as Leia, everybody will be in awe of our dedication, and that alone might be enough to assure our triumph. Do you want to be a loser, Mac?"

"You know I don't," Rob volleyed back, matching O.C.'s challenging tone, since there was something about Jack O'Callahan that made Rob want to prove to him that he was strong and could not be easily outwitted. "That's why I think you should be our lovely Princess Leia."

"Bullshit. That might be the dumbest idea I've ever heard come out of your big mouth, and that's saying a hell of a lot." O.C. snickered. "I've got the Solo swagger down, so I should be him. Meanwhile, you've got brown eyes, brown hair, pale skin, and patrician cheekbones, so you just scream Princess Leia to any objective observer."

"Go fuck yourself with a loaded shotgun," snapped Rob, his fists flexing with the barely restrained urge to add to O.C.'s almost infinite stitches tally. "I look less like Princess Leia than Muhammad Ali does."

"Oh, really?" O.C.'s voice dripped dubiousness and disdain. "Why don't you prove it, then?"

A fly buzzed around Rob's ear, ad he swatted at it more to shoo away the incessant insect than to kill it. The bug flew away into the corner behind O.C., and Rob would have sworn that he could almost hear the fly mocking him as it disappeared behind O.C. Wishing that the fly would mistake O.C. for a cow and begin taking chunks out of his flesh, Rob, no more able to resist a challenge than he could breathing, snarled, "Why don't you tell me how?"

"It's easy as screwing a whore." O.C. ran his right hand along the wall behind him and then pulled it back, fingers clenched, a second later. "If, during the next minute I can make you shriek like a girl, you have to dress up like Princess Leia for our Halloween partly, but, if I can't, I have to dress up as Leia for our little get-together. Sound fair?"

Rob's pupils contracted to suspicious slits. Not being a total moron or an alien who had just landed on the planet from Naïve World, he recognized that when a deal seemed too good to be true, any person who accepted it was probably agreeing to what amounted to an anal reaming without lube. Still, he couldn't see how O.C. could guarantee that he would shriek like a girl within a minute, so he answered tartly, "Fine with me. I hope you look sexy in a dress, O.C."

"Shake on it?" O.C. cocked his head so that he bore a disconcerting resemblance to a curious puppy.

"Certainly." Figuring that he should be magnanimous since he was all but assured of winning the bet, Rob extended his right hand toward O.C.

An instant later, O.C.'s right hand had wrapped around his, and he could feel something crawling from O.C.'s palm onto his skin.

"Ick." Rob's mouth curled with revulsion as he yanked his hand free of O.C.'s clasp. "You need to do a better job washing your hands. I can feel bacteria crawling around on your skin."

Then, looking down at his own palm to try to spot any germs that might be visible to the naked eye, he saw a black spider itching toward his wrist. Panic flooded him as his breath tore out of him in a shrill scream. His heart thudding in the cage of his ribs and his pulse surging like a tsunami in his veins, he waved his hand around frantically until he saw the spider crash to the floor. Hating O.C. and arachnids in equal measure, he smashed the spider to a pulp, and then focused on slowing his rapid breathing.

"Steady, Robbie." Mark patted him on the shoulder. "It's just a little spider. No need to clear out all our sinuses over a bug, okay?"

"Yeah, Jesus Christ on a motorcycle," added Phil, who had always been renowned in the Gopher locker room for his unique obscenities, "you could have broken your lungs or shattered my eardrums. You definitely shrieked like a girl. O.C. won by a country mile."

"Of course I did." All complacency, O.C. reclined against the wall. "Whenever Mac sees a spider in the locker room, he has a spasm attack before he can kill it. I knew putting a spider on him would scare the shriek and the shit out of him."

Provoked by O.C.'s smugness, Rob hissed, "Go play marbles on the interstate, O.C., because I'm going to be the best Princess Leia ever, and Carrie Fisher isn't going to know what sixteen-wheeler plowed into her when I win an Emmy for my performance. Oh, and I'm proud to be Princess Leia, since she's passionate, witty, and brave. She may look like a delicate flower, but even after she had been tortured, she had the balls to defy Vader when all the Imperial generals were tripping all over themselves in terror that their asthmatic overlord would choke them. She was no damsel in distress, because she was more of a man in the courage department than most of the guys in the film, including Luke Skywalker, who said half his lines in a nasal whine that made me want to box his ears repeatedly."

"Well, if O.C. is Han Solo, and Mac is Princess Leia," commented Phil, "I guess I'll release my inner Dark Side and wear a Darth Vader costume. I mean, I always wanted whole star systems to tremble at the sound of my approaching heavy breathing. There's nothing quite like being a villain with emphysema, you know."

"I'll be Luke." Mark gave a sly grin. "Better start practicing my whining."

"If you whine like Luke does when he says that power convertor line—"Rob held up a finger in warning—"I'll box your ears until your head feels as windy as a highway tunnel."

"Come on." Mark nudged him. "You can't do that. You aren't dressing up as Uncle Owen, remember."

"Want to test that theory?" Rob shot Mark a glacial glare that made it obvious he believed experimenting in this regard was as foolhardy as attempting to quell a blazing fire with a gallon of gasoline. "I'm happy to take a major role in the result section of that lab report if you are."

"Ah." Mark chuckled. "In that case, I'll wear a wonderfully protective helmet before I whine anywhere in your earshot, Robbie."

Once everyone had finished plotting their costumes with their respective groups, the gathering gradually broke up. Rob, Steve, Eric, and Janny left the apartment, and made their way down the hallway to the elevator banks, which they rode down to their floor. When the elevator arrived at their level with a heraldic ding, they exited and strode down the corridor to their quarters.

"What are we going to have for dinner?" Steve wanted to know as soon as they stepped into their apartment and closed the door after them. "I'm starving—so damn hungry that I could eat an elephant and then gobble down a giraffe for dessert."

"You disgust me." Rob pressed his lips together in a plain demonstration of his distaste. "We ate before we went up to Wellsy's room, and you already want to shove more food down your gullet into your oversized gut."

"It' all that thinking." Steve rubbed his stomach. "It makes a guy hungry."

"Only because you think with your stomach, Stevie." Derisively, Rob rolled his eyes.

"Agreed." Eric's gaze expanded earnestly. "I can't believe that Steve was the one criticizing Janny and me for buying too much food. It'll be a marvel if it's not all gone by this time tomorrow."

"Speaking of food, what are we going to have for dinner?" demanded Steve with the air of a CEO refocusing members of a conference on the essential topic of discussion. "That's the most important concern right now."

"Janny and I purchased pounds upon pounds of pasta," replied Eric. "We could have some spaghetti and tomato sauce."

"Boring." Steve clicked his tongue. "Who are you—Rizzo?"

"No," Eric responded, unruffled. "If I were Rizzo, I'd suggest fettucine alfredo."

Before Steve could counter this assertion, Janny, ever the peacemaker, piped up, "We could make some grilled chesses sandwiches with ham and tomato. Who doesn't need a healthy dose of grease in their diet?"

There was a ragged chorus of agreement with this proposal as they trailed into the kitchen. Rob had just entered last when a knock resounded from their apartment door.

"I'll get it," Rob tossed over his shoulder as he hurried down the hallway to the door, wondering vaguely which teammate had dropped by for a visit.

Opening the door a second later, he found himself gazing up at his father, who was still in his suit and tie and whose hair had been sprinkled with more salt than pepper since the last time Rob had seen him. His throat constricting at this sign of age on a man who was never supposed to weaken, Rob flung his arms around his father, murmuring, "Dad."

"Son." Dad gave his neck an affectionate squeeze. "Herb must be treating you like a dog if you're this happy to see me."

"Yep." His mouth twitching wryly, Rob twisted away from the embrace. "I'm always in the doghouse."

"Not tonight." Dad smiled slightly. "I've come to take you out for bite to eat."

Rob chewed meditatively on his lower lip, since he was well aware that when his father referred to a bite to eat, he was not implying grabbing a burger at a grill or a pizza at a café. No, he was talking about indulging in a three-course banquet at a fancy restaurant most people could not pronounce properly without risk of hernia. That was bad, because Rob would definitely feel the weight of a gourmet meal when he skated tomorrow, and, besides, he was just about at his socialization limit for this evening. Certainly, he did not have the energy for inane chit-chat about the neighbors that would bore him to the point of catatonia in a restaurant thronged with well-dressed sheep. In fact, he had been planning on retreating to his bedroom after his grilled cheese to enjoy another couple of chapters of _Crime and Punishment_…

Unfortunately, Dad was one of the few beings who had a right to press him on what his prior engagement was if he claimed a previous commitment, and his father would not be satisfied with Rob choosing a book for company over his family. Oh, and the faithful stand-by about having a thing with his family wouldn't work when it was his dad he was trying to escape an evening of socializing with.

"Could we re-schedule?" Rob suggested at last. "I have practice tomorrow, and I need to be well-rested."

"No, Rob, I can't take a rain check." Dad's forehead furrowed in the way it usually did when he wanted to stop Rob from making anything that remotely resembled a scene. "I already made a reservation for two at Bella Rosa's, and I don't plan on cancelling just because you're having trouble remembering that family comes before hockey."

"All right, Dad." Recognizing that any further protest would make him sound like a surly brat in desperate need of sorting out his priority list, Rob lifted his palms in capitulation. "I'll go."

"Good man." Dad's eyes scanned Rob from top to toe and glowered at his attire. "Go change now. Bella Rosa's is a high-end eatery. You can't show up wearing those slob clothes. The maitre d' will laugh you out of the place."

"I know that," muttered Rob, squashing the mutinous temptation to roll his eyes. When his father's sharp gaze pierced reprovingly into him, he continued, "If you want, you can wait in the common room. I hope you'll be comfortable even though our couch looks like a dead water buffalo."

Once Dad had situated himself on the common room sofa, Rob vanished into the bedroom he shared with Steve, where he pulled brown slacks and a navy button-up shirt out of his drawers. After smoothing out any invisible wrinkles, he replaced his jeans and sweatshirt with them. Then he ran a comb through his hair and made certain his part was still straight and definitive. Only then did he spray on a dash of cologne and determine that he was presentable.

"Ready to go?" Dad rose from the couch as Rob entered the common room. Then, without waiting for a response, he strode over to the door, remarking briskly, "Marvelous. Let's get a move on."

Driving the car over to Bella Rosa's, Dad did most of the talking as he navigated the teeming boulevards bright with streetlights and headlights. As Dad described in excruciating detail some interesting projects Rob's oldest brother, Scott, who was an architect, was working on, and the progress Glenn, Rob's next oldest brother, was making in his master's degree, Rob nodded at appropriate intervals and asked the occasional relevant question when it seemed the conversation was losing its vital signals in a lull.

By the time Dad parked the car in the elegant Italian restaurant's lot, they had covered these topics thoroughly, as well as exhausted the discussion of Mom's activities with her Ladies' Garden Club (they had just picked some pumpkins for the local elementary school's Halloween party), Ladies' Book Club (they had just finished some sappy romance with a title Dad couldn't recall), and the Ladies of Charity at their church (they were running a candy drive to ensure that less fortunate children throughout the Twin Cities had a happy Halloween).

When they stepped into Bella Rosa's, Rob's immediate impression—as always—was of warmth and light. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, illuminating the burgundy walls that were decorated with pastoral paintings and offset perfectly by the creamy hue of the soft, velvet drapes covering the windows. Candles in stained glass holders burned on every table, casting pools of rainbow rays onto the mahogany. Strains of classical music just reached their ears through the clinking of silverware against china dishes and the chattering of diners.

"Thomas McClanahan," Dad announced as he came to stand in front of the maitre d's podium. "Reservation for two."

"Yes, sir, I recognized you at once." The maitre d' made a mark in his leather guest book, and then collected menus from pile beside him. Leaving his position behind the podium and walking toward the dining room, he went on, "Please follow me, gentlemen. I'll escort you right over to your table. Oh, and is that young Stuart with you tonight, Mr. McClanahan?"

As Rob felt a twinge of irritation at being confused with his younger brother who was still in high school, Dad replied in the tone he always employed to brag about his sons' achievements at the country club over a brandy or a round of gulf, "No, no, this is Robert—the one who plays hockey. He's training with the Olympic team right now. The wife and I are very proud, of course."

Rob put on the charming smile that proclaimed he was the kind of son that any parent would yearn to kidnap in order to call their own. After all these years, he understood exactly how to behave in an establishment like this. He was here primarily to be admired and paraded about, not to be seen or heard. He was supposed to show his politest manners—napkin folded tidily in his lap, the appropriate fork used for every course, and his utensils placed precisely at 3 o'clock on his plate to signal the waiter when he was done. At a restaurant like this, he was reduced to being a mirror, existing only to reflect his parents' image back to them as they'd like to be perceived. He was a hollow vessel of a son to be temporarily rinsed of his own ambitions, desires, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the tepid water of gracious compliance.

"Of course." The maitre d' beamed as he pulled out their chairs for them, and they sat down on their upholstered seats. "I used to play hockey, too, but I was only a good benchwarmer. I was the best benchwarmer in the league, though."

As the maitre d' left them with an assurance that their waiter would be right over to take their orders, Rob felt a fissure form in his vessel. Cracking open as he perused the dinner menu, he mumbled, "That man is quite an annoyance. If he was half as clever as he thought he was, he'd be twice as smart as he really is."

Dad's eyes flicked to the left and then to the right to ensure that no one at the neighboring tables could overhear, and then said dryly, "He's certainly not in the top fifty percentile of IQ scores, I would imagine, but he's found a niche suitable for someone with his limited intellectual capabilities, and he performs his duties with gusto. He doesn't bother me."

"If he just came up with a different hockey joke about his playing days, he'd be ten times less irritating." Rob's chin lifted.

"What are you thinking of ordering?" Dad was peering intently at his menu, his scrutiny of the dining options apparently all-consuming.

"Veal marsala." Rob shut his menu with a decisive snap. Veal at least was a protein that could give him strength in practice tomorrow.

"Delicious entrée. I'm going with filet mignon myself." Dad nodded as though in confirmation of his own opinion. "I'm planning on starting with an antipasto for an appetizer. What about you?"

"I think I might abstain." Rob breathed deeply before taking the plunge. "I don't want to feel like a stuffed turkey on ice tomorrow."

"You can't go to a place like this without ordering an appetizer." Dad shook his head. "That would be like picking your nose with your salad fork at the table. Speaking of salad, why don't you order the garden salad with raspberry vinaigrette? Your mom says it's very light, and she always gets it here when she's on a diet."

"I'm not on a diet." Rob bit back a scowl, but hoped that his vexation would be noticeable in his voice. "I wouldn't eat so much pizza and burgers if I were."

"I know you're not on a diet." Dad's eyebrows arched in a way that made it clear Rob's aggravation had been duly noted. "I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, son."

"I'll have the garden salad with raspberry vinaigrette." Rob prayed for a lightning strike or the appearance of the waiter to save him from his misery, which was reaching epidemic proportions. While Dad would gladly dine in an elegant eatery like this every night of his life, and most of his teammates would rather be force-fed worms than take dainty nibbles of foods they had never even heard of while making polite small talk, Rob was somewhere between the two extremes. He couldn't hate places like this because they made the best veal marsala and pistachio gelato, but he would be lying if he claimed the restrictive atmosphere didn't chafe at him. This realization about where he stood on the subject of fancy restaurants compared to others made him feel, not for the first time since he started playing college hockey, rather like a leper without a colony. "Thank you for the suggestion."

A waiter whose black and white suit made him resemble an Emperor penguin sauntered over to their table, greeting them, "Good evening, gentlemen. My name is Tony, and I will be you sever this evening. May I get you started with something to drink?"

As Dad explained that he wanted to order a bottle of nice red wine to accompany their meal and let Tony persuade him to order a bottle that probably cost more than a minimum wage worker earned in a payroll period, Rob drummed his fingers idly on the silken placemat at his spot.

Once Tony had taken their orders and bustled off in the direction of the kitchen, Rob removed his cloth napkin from the table and folded it evenly on his lap, taking a stab at establishing small talk by asking, "Read any good books lately, Dad?"

"Yes," answered Dad, as he also arranged his napkin on his lap. "I just finished a book on the War of 1812 called _The Forgotten War_. It analyzed the causes and consequences of the war, and how unfortunate it is that most people are only familiar with the War of 1812 as a backdrop for the composition of our national anthem."

"I'm not exactly a history buff, but even I know more than that." Rob smirked, as Tony appeared with their wine in a bucket of ice. "Wasn't the White House burned down when the British invaded D.C.?"

"Indeed," Dad confirmed dryly, as Tony grabbed his wineglass by the stem and filed it with a rich red wine. He nodded his thanks at the waiter and continued, "Dolly Madison darted around the White House before the British came, rescuing priceless national artifacts like a portrait of George Washington. What a heroine. What a fearless First Lady."

"She was better than Lincoln's wife, anyway." Rob paused to nod his gratitude at the waiter for filling his wineglass, and then went on, "Wasn't Mrs. Lincoln something of a Confederate sympathizer?"

"You could make that argument." Dad took a drink from his wineglass. "She's been accused of such conduct by her contemporaries and historians alike, at any rate. Now, what about you, Robbie? Have you read anything riveting recently?"

"I'm making my way through _Crime and Punishment_ currently." Rob sipped his wine, which sparkled in his mouth, his throat, and finally in his stomach. "It's a fascinating and chilling challenge to the notion that a person of superior willpower and intellect is above morality and law, subject only to whatever constraints they impose on themselves."

"That book is by a Russian, isn't it?" Dad raised his glass to his lips again.

"Yes, but it was published long before the Iron Curtain was created." Rob's mouth pressed into a tiny, defiant line. "There's nothing Communist about it. It's a classic, and there's nothing shameful or scandalous about reading it."

"Of course not," agreed Dad in a rush of syllables as Tony materialized with their appetizers and disappeared again once they had thanked him for the delivery of their food. "It does make you wonder what the author would think of the present regime in Russia, though."

"Dostoyevsky would probably think that the high-ups in the Russian government are just the sort of beings he'd condemned in his work." With a shadow of a smirk, Rob stabbed greens soaked in raspberry vinaigrette with his salad fork and transferred them to his mouth. He enjoyed the sweet tang of the dressing on his tongue and the fresh crunch of vegetables between his teeth before elaborating, "I bet most Russians hate their tyrannical government even more than the average American despises our ignorant and incompetent President."

"Probably." Dad dug into his antipasto with vigor. "Their leaders are malicious, while Carter is well-intentioned but idiotic."

"To think that the United States used to elect impressive Presidents—guys like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln." Ruefully, Rob shook his head as he munched on another forkful of garden salad drenched in raspberry vinaigrette. "Tragically, over the centuries since our founding, the quality of our Presidential timber has declined to such a degree that today we have to be basically satisfied if our President stays out of jail and occasionally emits a complete sentence. I guess that's a good thing, though. It proves that our teachers weren't lying when they said, as they often did, that in this country anybody can be elected President."

"I still don't know how Carter was elected." Dad chuckled into his appetizer. "I'm sure he's a good man, but he essentially has the magnetism of a cheese log. Yet he went from nowhere to becoming the most powerful man in the world, which I suppose is what the American Dream is all about. One day he was an unknown politician cutting the ribbon to open the Moon Pie Festival; next thing you know, he's exchanging threats with the Soviet Union."

"Two words explain his election, Dad." Rob fiddled with the stem of his wineglass. "Disco era."

Dad laughed, and the subject of politics carried them through their appetizers. Only when Tony had cleared away their appetizers and delivered their entrees did Dad broach the reason why he had invited Rob to dinner.

"Rob." Dad's knife sliced through his filet mignon. "There's no point in beating around the bush any longer. I brought you here because I need to talk to you about something important. I already discussed it with your mother and Stu last night over dinner, as well as with Scott and Glenn at lunch today."

"Oh?" Rob said when his father showed no sign of continuing without some type of feedback, carving his veal into exact squares. "I'm all ears."

"You remember how my father has been forgetting things over the last few months—simple but vital information like his last name or his address?" Dad finished cutting his meat and began eating it.

"Yeah." Rob nodded. "It's not my memory that's been failing me lately, Dad."

"Well, your grandfather isn't just suffering from sporadic memory lapses." Dad paused, rubbing his palms over the knees of his pants and not meeting Rob's widening eyes. "Yesterday he was diagnosed with dementia—er, Alzheimer's as they're calling it now."

Think. He must think, but he couldn't. A strange tingle that had nothing to do with wine started in his fingers and traveled up his arms into his chest. His whole body trembled. A terrible pressure squeezed the air from his lungs. Hysteria bloomed like weeds in his mouth. He longed to scream, but no word or sound came out.

"The doctors don't anticipate a stiff decline in his cognitive functions." Dad's manner was dispassionate, as if they were speculating on whether the weather would take a turn for the chilly this weekend. "They believe that he should be able to recognize his family members for at least another handful of months. I know that you were close to him and he loved your spirit, but you have some time with him yet. Once your mom finds a nice nursing home for him and your grandmother, you can visit him there."

"I see." Rob spoke in an offhand tone as if he merely wanted to know what made a beautiful garden. He was controlled and courteous. "What does make a nice nursing home?"

"Qualified staff." Dad was undeterred in his eating by the grim topic. "Comfortable and spacious rooms with bright décor. Nutritious and varied meals. Activities to stimulate the mind and body. Roses in the garden. That sort of thing."

"Roses in the garden?" echoed Rob scornfully, bitterness pouring out of him like kerosene and burning both him and his father. "Grandpa hates flowers. He would no more want to stroll among the roses than I'd want to spend my free time throwing books on bonfires. I realize that you detest your father, but I didn't think you didn't know him at all."

"My father and I have never gotten along, but I don't despise him, and you should think twice before saying such hateful things." Dad's jaw was taut. "I wish nothing but the best for him now. That's why I'm prepared to pay top dollar for him to be well cared for in a nursing home until the end of his days."

"Bullshit." Rob snorted into the veal he no longer felt like eating. "If you gave a damn about him, you'd let him and Grandma stay in one of our home's two guest rooms. There's plenty of space in the house with Scott, Glenn, and me all in apartments, and Stu going off to college in the fall."

"Robert. Watch your mouth. Your mother and I aren't qualified to care for someone with Alzheimer's." Dad's tone—edged in steel—was all warning even as his smile remained constant for the benefit of the waiters and their fellow diners.

_Must not let anyone think we McClanahan men are so petty as to indulge in spats over dinner_, Rob thought spitefully. _At the table, we only talk about the weather, and when the weather is bad, we pretend not to notice. _

Rob didn't want the tears welling in his eyes to be detected by anyone, especially his Dad, so he tried to think of the wickedest thing he could say under the circumstances, and then it was shooting from his tongue like an arrow as he bolted to his feet. "I hope that you'll have some mental problem severe enough that I can justify locking you away in a nursing home when you're old and gray. Why shouldn't you be paid back in your own faulty currency?"

Dad's face went blank, shocked, like Rob had reached out and slapped him. Keeping his voice low but fierce, he commanded, "Sit down, Robert. Now. You're out of order, and I'll have an apology at once."

Rob's eyes burned—either with anger or with unshed tears—and he stuck up his nose, assuming his most frigid air. "Excuse me," he said, spinning on his heel and stalking toward the restroom on the far side of the dining room with as much dignity as he could muster.

Excuse me. What a magnificent phrase that was. It could exonerate a flaw or liberate from a sticky social situation. It could be used to imply one was going to the bathroom but didn't wish to mention anything remotely indelicate, yet it could just as easily mean someone was going to jump off a bridge or shoot up some drugs.

He had reached the sanctuary of the bathroom. Shutting and locking the door behind him, he turned on the faucet and stared into the aquamarine basin. Hot, salty tears spilled down his cheeks, and he allowed himself to cry now that nobody could see or hear his weeping.

_God save me from a son's tears, for I've no strength against them_, Mom would say if she were here to dry his eyes. Mom with her twinkling gaze and permed hair, her lilting laugh when Rob delighted her, and her far-off expression—as if he didn't exist—when he had been less than a gentleman. He couldn't imagine that she'd be overjoyed when she heard from Dad how Rob had acted at the restaurant tonight. Saying nasty things and storming off were generally frowned upon in polite society, after all. She would probably remind him at her next opportunity that honor thy father and thy mother was one of God's I'd-Rather-You-Didn't-Lest-I-Have-to-Smite-You-into-Ash commandments.

His stomach ached at the thought of it all. What had he been thinking a moment ago? Some days—maybe even most days—his reason was just no match for his fiery temper and sharp, sarcastic tongue. Now there was nothing for him to do but swallow his pride, return to the table, and apologize to Dad.

He dried his eyes with a paper towel from the dispenser by the sink. Then he ran it under the jet of cold water streaming from the faucet and patted his eyelids with it. That would take care of any tell-tale crimson rimming his eyes. Rubbing the cool, damp paper towel on his cheeks wilted the roses blossoming there.

Now no one would know about his breakdown, he told himself as he hurled the wadded paper towel into the cerulean trash can. That was the ticket. He had followed the rules for a happy life among the upper-middle class to the last staid letter: excuse yourself, flee to the bathroom as fast as manners will permit, switch on the faucet, engage in your own waterworks, and then use a damp towel to soak up all evidence of the fact that you had feelings that could be hurt; lather, rinse, and repeat as often as necessary.

Taking a deep breath to brace himself for a return to the dining room where he could be judged for everything from his shoes to his hair, he opened the door, stepped out, and wended his way between the tables until he arrived at the one where his father was picking at filet mignon.

"Dad." Awkwardly, Rob fell back into his cushioned chair and attempted a radiant beam he hoped would put the sun to shame. "I'm sorry. I—I don't have a clue what came over me. It was like I just forgot myself."

Dad sighed, and, for the first time, Rob could see his pain in the way his fingers combed through his hair, over and over, and, abruptly, Rob understood what it cost his father to hide it all. Unfortunately, Rob didn't know how to build a bridge across the chasm of silence.

"Oh, Robbie." Dad's voice cracked like he was going through puberty again, and he stopped for a moment. He was fighting whatever grief was boiling inside him. He cleared his throat with the sound of car wheels on a gravel road, and then went on, "What I mean to say is: are you quite all right?"

Rob toyed with his fork. "You want to know if I had a nervous meltdown in the bathroom."

"If you want to put it so bluntly, yes," responded Dad.

Now, Rob saw that it was ridiculous to imagine that Dad cared about his true feelings. He was only concerned that Rob might have somehow shamed their family.

"Yes, I'm quite all right." The sound coming out of Rob's mouth was a cross between a laugh and a howl, like the noise a madman would make. He could laugh until his lungs burst; it was such a flagrant lie—he most certainly wasn't all right. But his blatant falsehood worked as he knew it would, because that was what living in a privileged world was: a gigantic, pretty lie. An illusion where everybody by common consent agreed to shelter themselves by glancing the other way from anything agonizing and pretending nothing unpleasant existed at all, no goblins of the dark and no ghosts of the soul.

Relieved, Dad straightened his shoulders. "Excellent. Well, then." The paternal moment had passed, and he was all authority again. "Robbie, my father's Alzheimer's is a blight on this family's good name. It would be scandalous—damage our reputation in the community and cast aspersions on all of our sanity—if the true facts of his condition were public knowledge, so, as far as those outside of the family are concerned, he was put in a nursing home just because he was getting older. I realize that you may disagree with that decision, but, as your father, I'm telling you the less said about his disease, the better. It's for your own protection."

Dad was all fact and no feeling. It served him well as an attorney. Rob knew what his father was saying was true, since North Oaks was a community of sadists with well-stocked wine cellars and good tea serving skills who would merrily gossip about their neighbors until their faces were blue from oxygen deprivation. In a town where everyone had skyscraper high net worth, trust was the most valuable commodity, and it was seldom on the market. Still, that didn't prevent Rob from resenting his dad for being right. "Are you positive it's my reputation you're worried about?"

Dad's nostrils flared. "I'll overlook that impertinent question. If you won't consider yourself and your brothers, think of your grandmother. She's frail, Robbie. You can see that." He fidgeted with the cuffs of his suit jacket. "If the circumstances of her husband's illness were widely known, it could bring on a heart attack or her death."

"Yes, fine," agreed Rob dully, feeling dead inside like the ghost of a boy who would nod obediently, smile obligingly, and sip his wine but who wasn't really alive or present as more than a vapor.

After that, neither of them ate much more, and when Tony, attempting a beatific smile that made him look as though he were enduring a painful bout of wind, appeared to inquire how they were doing, they asked to have their meals wrapped. Dad paid the bill, and, within a half hour, they were standing in the hallway outside Rob's apartment.

"Make us proud, Robbie." That was all Dad offered by way of farewell. No sentimental reassurances: no "I love you; it's all going to be just fine, you'll see." Then, before Rob could reply, Dad was gone, and the only sound in the empty corridor was Rob's key scraping in the lock to unbolt it.

When Rob entered the room he shared with Steve, his roommate glanced up from a GI Joe comic long enough to ask, "How was dinner with the old man?"

"It beat a sharp stick in the eye." Rob tugged off his formal clothes and slipped into the warm comfort of his pajamas. "Or not."

"I thought it would be better than that." Steve's eyebrows rose until they nearly kissed his hairline. "I mean, you were going to a fancy place like Bella Rosa's."

"I see, and, by that crappy logic, my life also must be perfect all the time, because I'm from North Oaks," Rob exploded, releasing all his pent-up wrath on the first available target. "Would you like to be paraded about the dining rooms and parlors of polite society like some prize horse there to have its racing capabilities evaluated? Would you still think North Oaks was so charming when you were the subject of cruel gossip for the slightest infraction of the community's million unwritten rules? North Oaks isn't as idyllic as the real estate agents make it out to be, okay?"

"Okay." Steve's face was one concerned frown. "Look, Mac, you're scaring me right now. Why don't you just tell me what happened? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Rob's mouth twisted as he headed toward the bedroom door. "Nothing a shot or two of liquor won't cure. That's one of the greatest things about life, you know: there are only a few problems that can't be put into proper perspective by heavy dosages of alcohol."

Then, before Steve could stop him, he marched into the kitchen and poured himself a shot of whiskey. His mouth was dry as sawdust, because he normally confined his debauchery to beer and wine. Raised to his quaking lips, the whiskey smelled sweet and harsh at the same time. It was the scent of all things tantalizing, powerful, intoxicating, and forbidden. It burned going down his throat, making him cough and sputter as if someone had set a match to his lungs.

A surprising heat flowed through his body. He was floating inside his skin, and he would gladly go on drifting like this for days. The real world with its heartbreaks and disappointments was merely a pulse against the protective membrane he'd drink himself into. It was somewhere outside of him, waiting, but he was too giddy to bother with it. He wondered if this was what it would feel like to be Grandpa, wrapped tightly inside his Alzheimer cocoon: no pain, only the distant beating of hazy memory. The sadness of that image was overwhelming, and Rob was drowning in it, so he poured another shot, knowing that he'd stink like a distillery at tomorrow's practice, and not giving a fuck.


	6. Chapter 6

"_I sometimes think we must all be mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats."—Bram Stoker, __**Dracula. **_

Sanity in Strait-Waistcoats

During practice the next morning, Rob felt like a poorly re-animated corpse out of some Gothic novel. As far as he was concerned, the aftereffects of whiskey were the Devil's brainchild. There wasn't a second when his head didn't pound like a war drum, and his breakfast—dry toast with marmalade—constantly lurched precariously on the sea of his stomach. He had already vowed to himself a thousand times that he would never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it would be strictly beer and wine.

Everything that happened last night after he entered the kitchen to pour himself whiskey was a foggy, gray blur like the ethereal, misty air in photos of Ireland. He had lost track of how many shots he had tipped back (and he thought that was just as well, because the alcohol would not be working properly if he could still count or think at all after however many shots it was), and he had been barfing up what little dinner—tufts of salad and chunks of veal—that he had eaten into the sink in acidic bursts that burned his throat worse than the whiskey when Steve came into the room.

Pinching his nose and declaring that Rob smelled like he had bathed in a barrel of rum, Steve had cleared the sink and tricked Rob, whose inhibitions and suspicions were suitably lowered by the alcohol, into swallowing a glass of ice water by assuring him it was vodka on the rocks. Then, as Rob raged incoherently about the water not being vodka and how he needed vodka immediately, Steve had dragged him to bed and positioned him so that if he vomited he wouldn't choke on his own barf. In his intoxicated stupor, he had continued to ramble about whatever crossed his mind and about everything except what was really bothering him before he had fallen asleep in what was probably mid-sentence.

This morning was a tad clearer in his mind, although reflecting on it still made the whole time feel out of focus, as if he were studying it through the wrong end of a microscope lens. He had woken up with a head that roared like an irate brown bear and that echoed every sound like a shell—each noise growing louder by the repetition and never fading. His stomach had been replaced by a stormy sea on the verge of making itself sick. His pores had seeped alcohol instead of sweat. Every inch of his skin had felt sensitive and feverish. He truly had believed the physicists that insisted the world was constructed of atoms, because he would swear that he could feel each one ramming painfully into his flesh at upward of a hundred miles per hour.

Taking an intense interest in the unique whorls of individual floorboards, Rob had pushed himself out of bed. Leaning on the walls for support, he had stumbled out of his bedroom down the hallway to the bathroom, where he began the morning on a high note by throwing up into the toilet. After flushing down the evidence of his sickness, he had rubbed a cold towel over his face, brushed his teeth to rid them of the nasty rime of alcohol and barf, and swallowed two Advil, which, at the very least, couldn't worsen his throbbing headache, though, at this point, he could probably claim the same about a sledgehammer to the face.

After that, he had wobbled into the kitchen, where Janny pestered him into drinking a cup of peppermint tea to soothe his stomach, and Eric thrust a plate of toast (with no butter and no crust, because that was how Eric liked it) with marmalade into his hands, assuring him it would give him energy and not make him sick.

In practice now, Rob wasn't so sure about either promise. His roommates, he decided, needed to invent better hangover cures if they were to adequately support him in his new lifestyle as an alcoholic…

A sharp nudge in the ribs sent the marmalade toast blazing up his throat. Gulping it down, he turned to glare at Mark, who was sitting to his right on the bench with a cherubic expression that belied the viciousness he had just displayed toward his teammate, snapping, "What the fuck did you do that for, Magic? Are you trying to send me to the emergency room with a broken ribcage or what?"

"Stop whining, and start climbing over the boards," Mark hissed in Rob's ear, the words sounding like a shout. "Herb wants us on the penalty kill again."

Massaging his aching temples, Rob emitted a dull groan. Practice today was devoted to the power play and the penalty kill. Since he and Mark were often deployed on both specialty units, their practice schedule was quite grueling: a shift on the penalty kill, a shift on the power play, and then a shift of resting on the bench before the insanity began again.

"Good for him," mumbled Rob. "I want my own Greek island. Greek islands have beautiful ladies with nice tans on sunny beaches and wine. Lots and lots of wine, which is all I really need to be happy, you know."

"Do you want to be the one who tells Herb he can't always get what he wants?" Mark demanded, leaping over the boards onto the ice. "I mean, personally, I can think of about fifty million things I'd rather be doing, including piloting an aluminum foil rocket ship directly into the sun, since, at least, my end would come quickly that way."

Rob contemplated this for a long moment with one dazed neuron struggling laboriously to synapse with the next until he muttered, "No, I don't."

Then, his coordination seriously lacking, he clambered over the boards onto the ice, feeling as if he was going to do a face-plant, but somehow maintaining enough control over his gross motor skills to avoid such an embarrassing fall.

"I'll take the right side, and you take the left, as usual," Mark whispered, clapping him lightly on the shoulder as they skated toward the faceoff circle at center ice.

"So glad you boys could find time in your busy schedules to join us at last," observed Herb acerbically as Mark went to stand across from Neal for the faceoff, and Rob positioned himself behind Mark, as a winger was supposed to do when a center took the faceoff on a penalty kill.

_Well, I'm not, so screw you, too, Herb, and the skates you came in on_,Rob thought mutinously, but his tongue was too clumsy to form those sarcastic words in a remotely timely fashion. Maybe the curb on his insolence was the only benefit to his hangover, although his ungainliness and his inability to think logically or swiftly would probably cause him more trouble than his sharp tongue ever had. Herb hated slow and stupid, and, by definition, hungover people tended to be both.

Herb dropped the puck. Mark's and Neal's sticks flashed in a skirmish for possession that Mark ultimately won, firing the puck down ice into the opposing corner. While Neal, Rizzo, and Steve collected the puck and regrouped for a rush, Rob and Mark fell back to the top of the large faceoff circles on both sides of their zone.

This placed them equidistant from opposing defenseman—O.C. and Bill—and their own net and defense—Rammer and Kenny Morrow. In practical terms, this meant that they were close enough to the opposing defense to block rushes and shots, but were near enough to their own net to not permit an opposing forward to become open by the goal.

Neal, Rizzo, and Steve were surging down the ice, setting up a passing clinic between the three of them that left Rob's already reeling brain dizzy. Struggling to emerge from his lethargy, since he had been on the penalty kill squad so many times at the U that part of him believed that he could probably kill penalties in his sleep after all those years of hard practice, he extended his stick over the ice in irregular, sweeping motions with his legs spread wide and his knees bent to force the oncoming forwards into sloppy passes or to make an intercept. On his right, he knew without having to glance over his shoulder that Mark was making similar sweeping patterns with his stick.

They both were experts on the penalty kill. They understood that forwards on a penalty kill had to be aggressive but controlled—not lunging at anyone and never acting carelessly. A penalty killer had to be conscientious. Every movement had to be deliberate and thought about in an eye blink because any mistake or miscalculation could result in a goal.

It was stressful since nobody ever applauded a successful penalty kill, but people lined up to spill blame after one failed, and the stress could never be allowed to overrule the focus a penalty killer needed to perform his duties properly. Even after the penalty expired, a player on the penalty kill could not relax, because many goals were scored on exhausted penalty kill units just after a power play ended.

Rob knew that, but his problem today was that he didn't care about hockey in general, and power plays and penalty kills in particular. Did it really matter if his team or the other scored a goal or a hundred? What difference did it make when they were all going to shrivel up like raisins, lose their memories and minds, be abandoned b their families to spend their last years in nursing homes where the most exciting thing that happened was Gladys winning double bingo two weeks in a row, and then die once they had been stripped of all their dignity? Why even pretend that any part of the cruel game of life mattered? Why not just get a comfortable seat in the stands and watch the chaos from the relative safety of the sidelines until time was up?

As absent-minded as he was, he had somehow managed to intercept a pass from Rizzo to Steve. Feeling the puck metaphorically burning a hole in the wood of his stick, Rob, anxious to be rid of it as soon as possible and not pausing for even a second to consider what he was doing, attempted to ice the puck to the far end of the rink. Only after the puck sailed away from him did it occur to him to hope that the puck's path down ice would be safe and clear.

However, since the universe was at best indifferent and at worst hostile to his hopes, Neal dashed in to take the puck, spun to lose Ken who was tailing him, and deftly fired a shot that whizzed past Rammer, who had tried to block the puck with his body, clanged off the crossbar on the goalpost, and ricocheted beck into the net just over Janny's outstretched glove.

Grateful that the goalie was Janny because Jimmy wouldn't hesitate to explain in no uncertain terms and elaborate details how the goal had been Rob's fault (as if he hadn't already figured that out, thanks), Rob braced himself for the Herb explosion, which would follow the shrill whistle that would be piercing through the arena within the next second…

Herb's whistle blow sliced through the air like a siren, and over the resounding din in his cerebrum, Rob almost didn't hear his coach snap, "McClanahan, you may have just broken your own damn record for harebrained penalty kill maneuvers, and that's saying something considering all the stupid stunts I've seen you do on the penalty kill over the years. What the hell were you thinking?"

Rob wanted to point out that if Herb really thought he was that dim-witted and irresponsible, then Herb was to blame for any defensive lapse that resulted from trusting him with being a penalty killer. Unfortunately, his tongue had forgotten how to express such complex ideas in a decipherable sentence structure, so he said blankly, as if being polite, deaf, or dumb would somehow shield him from his temperamental coach's wrath, "Pardon?"

"What the hell were you thinking when you tried to shoot the puck down the ice?" reiterated Herb in the tone an exasperated parent might employ when emphasizing to an obtuse toddler that people could not fly like airplanes just by flapping their arms. "I'd like an answer sometime before we all go gray if that doesn't strain your brain too much."

"I don't remember." Rob bit his lip until it bled, flooding his mouth with a metallic taste, and thought that this conversation was shattering land-speed records in its descent from terrible to catastrophic. "Sorry, Coach."

"You don't remember." Herb glowered at Rob in a way that made it plain he perceived coaching Rob McClanahan as a fate a notch or two below being tortured slowly to death. "You don't remember what was going through your mind a few seconds ago. Are you amnesic, stupid, or lying through your teeth?"

"I wasn't thinking when I tried to ice the puck," Rob admitted, clutching his stick tightly with both hands, because he would probably be relying on its support to keep him upright when the full fury of Hurricane Herb washed over him.

"That answers my question. You're just plain stupid, McClanahan." Herb studied Rob as if he were a rodent about to be vivisected with a scalpel in a biology experiment, but before he could begin to rip into Rob in earnest, Mark piped up.

"It's my fault, Coach," Mark said in his quiet, steady voice, and Rob didn't know whether to thank or throttle him. Mark's loyalty to a grump like him was touching, but he wished his teammate had devised a defense argument that wasn't so blatantly false that even a goldfish could spot the lie in a second. "I should have been covering Neal so he couldn't get the puck when Robbie tried to ice it. You don't need to yell at Robbie when I'm the one who caused the problem."

"Did you get your name legally changed to McClanahan?" Herb eyed Mark like a shark that had detected a droplet of blood in an aquarium of water. Herb was in a fine mood, that was for sure. No doubt he would be drowning kittens in their own blood and stoning lost puppies by lunchtime.

"No, Coach," answered Mark, chin lifting, "but—"

"Then I will go on using your name when I'm addressing you, and McClanahan's when I'm talking to him," Herb growled. "By the way, next time you want to cover a teammate's ass when they screw up the most basic moves in hockey, make your story a little more realistic, because even by suspending my disbelief until it's an inch thick, I'm not falling for your tale this time, Johnson."

Wishing that he could melt into the ice, Rob shut his eyes. He had gotten Mark into trouble, too, which just added to the litany of things that he did not need to have befall him that had happened to him anyway in the past twenty-four hours. What an absolute train wreck his life was.

"As for you, McClanahan," snarled Herb, and Rob felt a surge of relief that Herb was dumping the blame back on his shoulders where its weighty condemnation belonged, "next time you gain possession of the puck during a penalty kill, check that its journey up ice will be safe before trying to ice it. If it is not safe to ice it, shoot the puck back into your own corner where your defense can cover or clear it before the opposing forwards race in, or pass the puck carefully to another player on your team who can ice the puck safely, but don't just send the puck down the ice randomly and hope for the best. That's how you give up sloppy goals. Got it?"

"Got it." Rob nodded and stifled the urge to point out that he had understood that concept ever since he was a Pee Wee on the penalty kill. Such an argumentative remark would just raise Herb's hackles even more, which was at the bottom of the list of things Rob needed to happen at the moment. "It won't happen again. I promise."

"It better not." Herb's lips pressed into his thinnest, most disapproving line. "You and Johnson take the next shift off, and think about how to improve your penalty kill for the following one."

Rob's cheeks flamed as he returned to the bench. As much as he didn't want to care about anything anymore, since caring just seemed to bring more hurt than his heart could bear, he felt guilty for letting his team and his coach down. He was supposed to be a dependable penalty killer, not one who made careless plays. He was supposed to be conscientious with the puck, not throw it around willy-nilly and mentally wish it bon voyage as he sent it careening away from him without any consideration whatsoever. He deserved to have Herb and everyone else rip off his head, but instead, Mark had stood up for him. His pride was still at war with his heart about whether that was better or worse.

"Thanks for sticking up for me," Rob mumbled to Mark, taking an intense interest in his skate blades as he clattered over the boards and plopped on the bench. "I screwed up so royally that I didn't deserve it, but thanks."

"You aren't yourself today." Mark shrugged, as Rob noted inwardly that only Mark Johnson could find a reasonably tactful way of starting a friend was blasted out of their cranium. "Even Herb knows it wouldn't be fair to judge you too harshly for your performance today."

"It's my fault that I'm drunk as a skunk." Rob gave a laugh that bordered on the hysterical and nearly caused him to choke on the water he had just sipped from his bottle. "Drunk as a skunk. Ha ha. That rhymes or at least I think it does. Aren't rhymes so clever and funny?"

"You're so wasted." Obviously torn between amusement and pity, Mark patted Rob on the back as the left-winger continued to sputter on water. "At least you aren't a belligerent drunk. Anyway, my point is you don't normally drink to the point of inebriation, so I think everyone understands that there has to be a reason why you're like this."

"You stuck up for me." The hysterical laugh, which wasn't working anyway, strangled in Rob's throat. "I guess I owe you an explanation if you want one, Magic."

"Mac." Mark squeezed his shoulder as if to ensure that he had Rob's complete attention. "We're friends. Friends always have one another's backs, so you don't owe me anything. Just know that if you ever need to talk about whatever is bothering you, I'll listen. I may not be able to solve the problem, but I promise that I'll listen and help however I can, all right?"

"Yeah." Rob nodded and thought that someone who was as unpleasant as him—getting into arguments with his father at fancy restaurants and showing up to practice after bingeing on whiskey—did not deserve a friend such as Mark, who had probably never lost his temper with his parents or gotten himself totally plastered. For sheer guilt trips and humiliating failures, Rob was convinced that this practice, which wasn't even halfway over, was a lot worse than the one, as a Gopher, the morning after he had gone bar hopping with some of his buddies, and, for motives he could not comprehend while sober, had goaded an otherwise laidback football friend into giving him a black eye.

Those were the kind of situations his stubbornness and sarcasm liked to land him in, and he wasn't even too distressed about that, because at least his life was filled with challenges. Challenges engaged his mind and deluged his body with adrenaline. He was addicted to challenges as some were hooked on dope or crack.

His musings were interrupted by Dave Christian showing a piece of appear between his fingers, commenting, "This is a list Rizzo made of food and beverages people can bring to his party. You get a partner and then decide what food or drink you two want to bring. Just sign up on the list for whatever you and your partner want to bring. Okay?"

"Yep," Rob confirmed, frowning down at the paper, where the black ink squiggles obstinately refused to stay still in his blurry vision long enough for him to discern any words.

"You read this," he muttered to Mark after a moment of making no progress and feeling like an illiterate fool. "I can't read Rizzo's crappy chicken-scratch handwriting."

"It seems like the only thing left to bring is pumpkin pie," observed Mark after examining the list. "Everyone else pounced on everything from the soda and beer to the chips and cookies."

"Fuck them," Rob cursed, grinding his teeth. "Are we the only ones who have to bring a baked good like a pie?"

"That's what it looks like." Mark bobbed his head in affirmation. "Yeah."

"We'll just have to go to a bakery and buy one." Rob sighed. "We'll pay more per person than the lucky ducks who signed up to bring chips, but we can't do anything about that."

"Rizzo specified a homemade pumpkin pie on his list." Mark shook his head. "We've got to make it ourselves, Robbie."

"Joys abound on Earth today. Perhaps after this I could hang myself from the ceiling as an encore." Rob rolled his eyes. "I can't even ask my mother for a recipe, because she never makes pumpkin pies—just fruit and pecan ones. Only my aunt Christie makes pumpkin pies for the family get-together at Thanksgiving, but hers tastes like she just dumped a can of pumpkin in a pie crust and forgot to bake it or add any spices, so I always pretend to be too full from the feast to eat any of her delicious pie. I don't think I want to call her for her recipe since it will just make our teammates sick, and I don't hate them that much, even if they are a bunch of selfish bastards."

"My mom makes a good pumpkin pie that people don't have to pretend to like on Thanksgiving." Mark grinned as he filled in their names on the list and passed the sheet along to Silky to give to Rizzo. "After practice, I could call her and get her recipe. Then we could buy the ingredients from the corner grocery store and make the pie in my kitchen if you're free this afternoon. We should get our disastrous attempts at cooking out of the way sooner rather than later."

"Sounds great." Rob's eyes sparkled with the chance to light on a challenge that wasn't his grandfather's Alzheimer's. "Maybe after the pie is done baking, we can drop by the mall and pick out stuff for our costumes. When I'm hungover is probably the ideal time to select things for my Leia outfit, you know."

"Jeez." Mark mopped his palms along his forehead. "I can't believe how excited you are for your imminent humiliation."

"I'm an eternal optimist." Rob put on his best artificially cheery grin. "I live in hope."

After that, practice passed in a blaze of drills, none of which, thank the God who had apparently deigned to be merciful toward Rob's long-lost soul, were as humbling experiences as the previous penalty kill one, since Rob managed to confine his errors to relatively small ones rather than blunders large enough to drive a battleship through with room to spare.

Once practice was over, Rob swung by his apartment to change out of the hangover sweatpants and sweatshirt outfit he had worn to practice when he was still having difficulty determining which surface of any given room was the floor and which the ceiling. After he had dumped his dirty clothing into the hamper, he donned khakis and a sweater, aiming for a look that was casual but still presentable. Then he rode the elevator with its annoying canned music down to Mark's level.

"Here's our shopping list," announced Mark, opening the door when Rob knocked and waving the ingredients under Rob's nose. Stepping out of the apartment and closing the door behind him, he added, "I left the directions on the counter for later. Let's go."

Snatching the paper out from between Mark's fingers since he had to know all the details about any task he planned to accomplish, Rob read aloud, "Granulated sugar, ground cinnamon, salt, ground ginger, nutmeg, ground cloves, two large eggs, a can of pumpkin, a can of evaporated milk, and one unbaked pie crust. That doesn't sound like too impossible a list."

For the most part, this prediction proved to be accurate when they arrived at the supermarket. They found the spices, salt, and sugar in aisle seven. Then they walked to the end of the store where the refrigerated goods were kept. They put a carton of a half a dozen eggs into their shopping basket and then located the nine-inch, deep dish unbaked pie crust on a shelf four refrigerators down from the eggs.

"Now we just need to find the elusive evaporated milk and pumpkin," commented Mark.

"Yep." Rob snored. "Given this store's shitty organization, we'll probably find them next to the cigarettes and fishing hooks."

Out of the corner of his eye, Rob saw an employee in the hideous lime green smock the supermarket in an act of cruel and unusual punishment that probably should have been prohibited by the Constitution compelled its workers to wear re-stocking the milk in a distinctly lackadaisical fashion that resulted in various brands mixing together.

"Excuse me," Rob said. "Do you know where the cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin are located in this store?"

He expected to be pointed to a specific aisle or at the very least directed toward the customer service desk up front, so he was astonished and a bit miffed when the employee remained silent, not acknowledging Rob's inquiry at all as he continued to pile milk into the neighboring refrigerator.

Deciding to take the charitable interpretation that the worker was too engrossed in his job to hear Rob's question (since, surely, no employee in all of human history sucked at customer service enough to snub a patron for asking a simple question about where to find items in a store), Rob persisted in a slightly louder tone, "Excuse me. I don't know if you heard me, but I asked—"

"If I knew where the cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin are located in this store," parroted the employee, slamming the refrigerator door as he finished re-stocking the milk. Stalking off down aisle three, he tossed over his shoulder bitterly, "I know where the cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin are, stupid college boy. I only spend every fucking day of my life in this hell-hole re-stocking the shelves. Then assholes like you come along treating me like I'm a damn retard who can't remember where to find the goods I put on the shelves. It's ridiculous."

"Look, I was asking you to help me _find _the cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin," Rob shouted, even though he sensed that trying to reason with this jerk was a textbook example of a waste of time and energy. He wished he could chase after the rude employee but aisle three appeared to be the tampon and pad one, and those products reminded him too much of homicidal females for him to willingly enter that feminine dragon's lair. "I wasn't really asking whether you knew where they were per say."

The employee did not respond and had vanished completely down aisle three, leaving Rob to grumble at Mark, "Well, looking on the bright side, it's marvelous to know that Herb isn't the only one who finds me disagreeable whenever I so much as open my mouth. Truly, it's reassuring to realize I have that effect on a larger swath of the population than I imagined."

"I wish—" Mark's blue eyes, which had suddenly gone as hard and cold as glaciers, were narrowed as he glared down the aisle the store worker had disappeared down, and his hands were balled into fists—"that people would stop using the word 'retard' as an insult. It's not funny, and it's highly offensive."

His stomach knotting at the reminder of Mark's mentally handicapped little sister, Rob admired his friend's restraint at not tackling the rude worker. Jaw clenching, Rob declared in a fervor, "We won't stand for his use of that word, Mark. He was completely out of line to say it. We'll march right up to the customer service desk and let them know what kind of offensive staff they've got working here. They'll reprimand him or fire him once we tell them how he treated us just for asking where to find some stuff. Did you see his name tag by any chance?"

"No." Mark shook his head, hands easing out of their fists. "I didn't."

"That's okay. Don't worry." Rob gave Mark a bracing clap on the shoulder. "We'll be able to describe what he looks like so the people at the customer service desk will know who we're talking about anyway. Justice will be done, I swear. We'll see to that."

"I'm not going to try to take that idiot's job." Mark's voice was quiet but firm. "Either he's having a bad day kind of like you are, Robbie, in which case how he acted isn't representative of how he typically behaves, or else he really is that beastly all the time, and his life is miserable enough without me going out of my way to make it worse."

"You're so even-keeled." Rob couldn't figure out whether he meant this as a compliment or a condemnation. "You must think I'm a vengeful son of a bitch."

"Not at all." Mark smiled slightly. "Your defensiveness on behalf of your friends ins one of your few redeeming and endearing attributes."

"Talk about damning with faint praise." Pretending to wince, Rob spotted a mother with two children who appeared to be old enough not to besiege her every ten seconds with pleas to buy a dozen different types of snacks clinging to her cart.

Determining that when the efficacy of a store's customer service hovered around absolute zero (providing support for the theory that almost all jobs should be paid on a commission basis), it was justifiable to seek out the assistance of other shoppers, Rob approached the woman and asked, "Excuse me, ma'am, but I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the evaporated milk and pumpkin cans?"

"Of course." The lady pointed to her right. "Both are at the far end of aisle six near the registers."

"Thank you." Rob offered his most charming beam. "You've been loads more helpful than any sales clerk."

As he and Mark headed toward the aisle the woman had indicated, Rob remarked, all smugness, "It's kind of the reverse of target marketing. If you want to find evaporated milk and pumpkin cans, ask a mother who is not currently being harassed by her bratty offspring. If you want to find barbecue sauce or fishing supplies, ask a dad. If you want to find booze or condoms, ask a college boy. So simple but very few people ever are smart enough to crack the code."

"Glad you're around to express the worst stereotypes about college boys." Mark rolled his eyes as they made their way down aisle six. "Besides, your stereotypes aren't even accurate. I bet Janny could help a stranger find the Bibles but not the condoms."

"Janny is the exception to all the rules about the despicable nature of most of humanity." Rob shrugged, as he deposited a can of evaporated milk and a can of pumpkin into their shopping basket before resuming his path down the aisle toward the registers. "If everyone were like Janny, nobody would ever have to be afraid to leave their homes after dark, since no one would ever commit crimes or do anything malicious to anybody. Shit, if everybody were like Janny, Dad would need a new line of work. Good thing most people aren't like Janny and are complete jerks."

After paying what Rob regarded as too much money for too few groceries (because, no matter what reassuring bleating Carter made in the White House, inflation was happening at an astronomical rate, and anybody who didn't see that must have buried their head in a beach of sand), they returned to Mark's apartment to bake the pumpkin pie.

"We preheat the oven to four hundred and twenty degrees," said Mark once they had placed the paper bag of groceries on the counter, bending over to turn on and preheat the oven as he spoke. "You can mix the sugar, salt, and spices in a small bowl. The measuring spoons and the mixing bowls are in the cabinet above the sink."

Standing on tip-toe and wondering when short architects would break into the kitchen designing industry, Rob got out the tin measuring spoons and a plastic bowl. He checked the recipe on the counter, and then dumped three-fourths a cup of sugar; a teaspoon of cinnamon half a teaspoon each of salt, ginger, and nutmeg; and a quarter teaspoon of cloves into the small mixing bowl.

As Rob grabbed a fork from the cutlery drawer with which to stir the contents of the bowl, Mark, who was cracking the two eggs on the rim of a large mixing bowl, remarked, "When you're finished mixing that I'll probably be done beating the eggs, so you can pour the stuff in that bowl into here."

"Whatever you say, Captain." Rob gave an ironic salute before starting to mix the sugar, spices, and salt with vigor. "You're in command of this operation."

"Oh, if only you weren't being sarcastic." Mark chuckled as he finished beating the eggs and reached into a drawer to remove a can opener.

While Mark cut off the lid of the pumpkin can, Rob, satisfied that the spices were thoroughly mixed with the salt and sugar, poured the contents of his small bowl into the larger one with the beaten eggs. A second later, Mark plopped the pumpkin into the bowl as well.

As he began to stir the ingredients together, Mark told Rob, "You can open the can of evaporated milk and then add it gradually to the bowl while I mix it in."

Rob placed the jagged edge of the can opener over the can's lid and twisted the lever around, letting it make a slow, clunky job of separating the top of the can from the bottom. By the time he had completed this process, Mark had finished stirring the pumpkin into the eggs and spices.

"Gradually," admonished Mark in a rush of breath when Rob apparently tried to add the evaporated milk at too high a speed. "I said add the evaporated milk _gradually_. Do they not teach you the meaning of basic words in Minnesota schools or what, Mac?"

"It's not my fault that you're a slow mixer," retorted Rob, taking care to pour more slowly despite his protest. "Anyway, you're obviously hanging out with me way too much if you've picked up on my bad sarcasm habit."

"Please." Mark smirked as he stirred in the last of the evaporated milk, and Rob threw the can into the trash along with the pumpkin one. "Don't flatter yourself. I was sarcastic way before you met me. Honestly, you should have known me when I was twelve. That was the pinnacle of my sarcastic self."

"Really?" Rob arched a dubious eyebrow while he watched Mark push the crust into a pie pan and then pour the other ingredients on top of the shell. "It must have been the adolescent hormones that caused you to act up in such an uncharacteristic fashion."

"Perhaps." Mark snickered as he placed the pie in the over to cook. "I sure did have fun sassing my teachers, though. In algebra, if I was asked to find X, I'd circle it, draw a helpful arrow, and write, 'Here it is.' In social studies, if I was asked why the Soviets had built the Berlin Wall, I'd explain in a very serious tone that they were trying to beat the ancient Chinese, but that most experts agreed the Great Wall of China was superior to the Berlin Wall both in terms of architectural appeal and empire preservation."

"You didn't!" Rob gasped, eyes widening. "Even I had the sense to limit my impertinence to rude notes and drawings by the time I was in middle school. The contents of those would probably have been enough to land me in a week's worth of detention if the teachers had bothered to intercept them, but they never did, because I was a smart, good student passing notes to other smart, good students, so they focused their attention on the problem kids or the ones who needed a ton of handholding just to pass the course instead of on what students who already grasped the material were doing to entertain themselves in a moderately unobtrusive way."

"What can I say? You lacked my sense of daring and adventure in middle school," teased Mark. "Now, we let the pie bake at that temperature for fifteen minutes. Then we lower the temperature to three hundred and fifty degrees, and allow the pie to cook for another forty to fifty minutes. Do you want to go play a game of chess in my bedroom or something?"

"Sure," Rob agreed, letting Mark lead him into the bedroom Mark shared with Bob Suter.

As they settled themselves on the carpet, Mark reached under his bed to yank out a chess board and its accompanying pieces. Pushing the white ones at Rob and taking the black ones for himself, Mark commented, "You can be white and have the first turn, since you're the guest."

"How gracious," Rob replied with a rather predatory grin. "Graciousness is rarely a virtue in competition, you know."

"How do you know I'm not luring you into a false sense of security so that I can pounce on you when your complacency makes you sloppy?" countered Mark, as they set up their pieces on the board.

"If you were, you wouldn't spoil your dastardly plot by telling it to me," Rob riposted, sniggering as he nudged a pawn forward in his first move. "I mean, you aren't some caricatured villain in one of those ludicrous fantasy novels who always spills his evil plan to the hero before actually carrying out aforementioned dreadful scheme. You're smarter and more subtle than that, Mark."

"What do you have against fantasy novels?" Mark cocked his head inquisitively as he moved one of his pawns forward.

"Most of them are centered around quests where heroes with swords sharper than their brains find after only a brief search ancient and mysterious treasures that have reputedly been lost for centuries armed with no logical reasoning skills whatsoever and a few lines of bad poetry," scoffed Rob. "It's hardly surprising that I start questioning if anyone had ever really looked for the treasures besides our noble heroes."

"You're such a harsh literary critic." Mark sighed. "I doubt you'll find any book that isn't a classic that meets your exacting standards."

"If I do, that book will probably be regarded as a classic fifty years from now." Rob hesitated, cleared his throat, and then asked awkwardly before he could lose his nerve because if he didn't talk about his problem to somebody, he would go madder than Hamlet, "Um, Mark, does that offer to listen if I wanted to talk about anything still stand?"

"Of course it does." Mark paused in the midst of moving his knight to fix a keen blue gaze on Rob. "If I make an offer like that, I try to make sure that it's valid more than a couple of hours later."

"Dad doesn't want me to tell anyone outside the family about it, but if I don't, I might explode, especially because my family's approach to this will be to sweep the unpleasantness under the carpet as much as possible, which I can't do." The words tumbled from Rob's tongue in a rush. "He's afraid of the gossip people would spread about our family if word got out about it, you see."

"I don't gossip, especially about my friends." Mark finished moving his knight. "People who gossip about their friends don't deserve to have any, in my opinion."

"I believe that." Rob slid his pawn forward to capture one of Mark's. "And, well, you wouldn't judge me if you knew that someone in my family had an, er, mental issue?"

"Of course not." Mark moved a bishop. "Even if you had the mental issue, I'd want to help you deal with it, not condemn you for it, so you can stop beating around the bush whenever you like."

"My grandpa has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's." Rob felt like a soldier giving a report in the middle of a raging battle: focused on facts but not dispassionate. "Dad told me last night. He says it's the new word for dementia, basically, so Grandpa will go from forgetting his address and phone number to forgetting everyone in my family's names and faces. I don't know what to do or how to begin to handle this, because even doctors and medicine can't fix what's wrong with him. It's all just going to be downhill from here; that's all the experts can say about this disease."

"I'm sorry, Robbie." Mark didn't try to diminish or deny the horror of what Rob was saying, and that made Rob experience a surge of affection for him. "I wish that you didn't have to go through this, and that I could tell you how to make it all better, but I can't."

"You know you can't make this mess better, but Dad thinks he can." Rob's jaw tightened with resentment. "He wants to lock my grandfather who hates flowers more than I loathe dust bunnies up in a nursing home with a nice fucking rose garden. He spouts some bullshit about wanting to ensure that Grandpa is properly cared for by medical experts, but all he really means is that he despises his own father and would burn in the ninth circle of hell before he let Grandpa stay in one of our guest rooms. He puts a noble face on it to salve his conscience, but he can't fool me, and the thought of him locking away Grandpa drives me almost as crazy as imagining Grandpa not being able to recognize any of us. Soon I'll probably be like Hamlet, spewing speeches about how I can tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is southerly."

"Listen, Robbie," Mark began after a moment's pause. "I understand that you're upset and angry, and you have a total right to your feelings."

"Great." Rob snorted, scraping back his cuticles. "When people start talking about how I have a right to my emotions, they never fail to follow it up with an assertion that I have no right to be a complete bastard about whatever the issue is."

"That's not what I'm saying." Eyes expanding, Mark shook his head. When Rob arched an eyebrow, he confessed with a touch of ruefulness, "Well, maybe that is sort of what I'm getting at, but before you take the words out of my mouth, all I'm trying to say is that I know this is a rough time for you. That being said, I'm sure it's a difficult time for your dad, too, because no son would want to watch his father losing his memory, no matter what bad blood existed between them. I bet it was really hard for your dad to decide that a nursing home was the best place for your grandfather, and it probably hurts him that you're making him out to be a monster."

"You're right, Mark," Rob spat, bitterness and sarcasm spilling from him in equal measure. "Dad is definitely entitled to lock up whoever the hell he wants whenever the fuck he likes, and I should never dare to question his paternal prerogatives. I should just be a perfectly silent and obedient son. Thank you for pointing out how remiss I've been in my filial duties. I shall go flog myself immediately and then prostrate myself before my father in repentance."

"I thought you wanted me to give you honest advice." Mark's chin lifted. "If I'm wrong and you only needed a wall to bounce your shouting off, I'll be glad to be silent and nod agreement with everything you say, but if you'd like the benefit of whatever experience and insight I can offer, may I suggest you listen?"

"I apologize." Rob's cheeks flamed. "Magic, I do want you to challenge my ideas about this as you would about anything else, since there's no point in having a conversation if there's no true feedback involved. It's just sometimes my pride rears its ugly head when I'm told I'm wrong, especially about something as personal as this."

"No need to be sorry," Mark reassured him, giving him a slight smile that had a sad edge. "Anyway, I'm not trying to say you're wrong, Mac. That's just it. I think situations like this are so complicated and charged with complex emotions that probably everybody is at least a little bit right and wrong at the same time. I also believe that everyone involved has the best intentions, or at least that should be the default assumption until very convincing evidence on the contrary crops us, even if there is disagreement about what is the best or most moral thing to do under the circumstances."

"Humph." Rob exhaled gustily, losing the internal battle for patience. "Has anyone ever mentioned you have an infuriating tendency to not take a stance on things, Mark?"

"Bob Suter has about a million times." Mark flashed a quick grin, and then went on more somberly, "Seriously, Robbie, I would be lying if I said that I didn't relate to how you're feeling. When Mom and Dad put Diane in a home for the developmentally delayed, I took it as a sign that they didn't love her enough to keep her despite her problems. I was hurting and confused, so I started to make their lives miserable by acting up in school and stuff. Of course, now I see that it must have broken their hearts to put her in the home but they felt they had to because they loved her and believed that she couldn't get the care she needed anywhere else. It just makes me feel really guilty to reflect on how I made that rough time in their lives even more difficult by being a brat about everything. Disagree with your dad if you really think it's right and worth it, but just don't let that argument tear up your family even more than the Alzheimer's will. You'll regret it if you do, I think. That's all the advice I can give you based on my experience."

"Well." Rob chomped pensively on his lower lip. "Maybe I should swallow my pride and apologize to Dad, after all."

"You shouldn't hesitate to share your feelings, because bottling them up wouldn't be healthy for you or your family, either." Mark gave another ghost of a smile. "Just be tactful."

"Do you know me at all? I've never been tactful in my life." Rob's mouth quirked at the edges. "Perhaps I should let you express my concerns to my father instead."

"Nope, you're on your own from here." Mark raised his palms in the air. "I don't get directly involved in the family feuds of others. I have a strict policy about keeping my nose by not sticking it in other people's business, you see."


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: The lyrics to "Last Resort" by the Eagles and to "Celluloid Heroes" by the Kinks are not my property, so please don't sue me. I just wanted to make it clear that I was claiming no credit for the lyrics in case the attribution in the body of the story wasn't plain enough. Also, that story of Lou Vairo falling asleep and being awoken by Herb at the ballet the team went to during the '79 World Championships is true, although I invented the placement of everyone else at that moment in ways that suited this fanfic.

"_It would be interesting to know what it is that men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear the most."—__**Fyodor Dostoyevsky,**__**Crime and Punishment**_

Uttering a New Word

"Welcome aboard Will," Rob said as he and Mark climbed into his '75 Chevy Camaro for the drive to the mall to buy clothing for their costumes. He reflexively glanced in the rearview mirror to check that none of his cassettes had slipped out of their cardboard box on the back passenger seat. All the cassettes seemed to be in good order, but when he looked down at his rug, he saw clods of dirt. Now he probably seemed like a total slob who couldn't care for his belongings and took no pride in his possessions—because Mark's side of the vehicle probably had mounds of dirt as large as the Himalayas—and that wasn't fair. After all, he was proud of Will. Will was his first car: the one he had bought the spring of his sophomore year of high school with the money he had saved from his glamorous hob as a waiter at a country club. "Sorry about the dirt clumps. I haven't gotten a chance to vacuum in here since we got back from Europe."

"Don't worry about it." Mark grinned as he strapped his seatbelt. "The floor is the perfect place for dirt."

"Thanks for keeping me informed on the latest in interior design." Rob rolled his eyes, buckled his seatbelt, checked that the parking lot was empty behind him, and then backed out of his spot, which he knew would be stolen by the time he returned to the apartment complex, forcing him to again go through the miserable and ultimately meaningless ritual of trying to find a parking space in the Twin Cities.

As he pulled out onto the bustling boulevard, he added, "Since you're riding shotgun, you can control the radio. I don't like bothering with it when I'm driving unless I absolutely have to because it could cause an accident that would boost my insurance premiums."

"Let's check out your favorite stations." Mark pressed the first button below the cassette player, and one of Rob's preset stations trickled through the speakers in the uplifting strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Rob had just enough time to begin to feel inspired by the lofty, peaceful plateau the music was carrying him to when Mark, shaking his head, switched the channel and muttered, "I'm not in the mood for this one. It sounds like two cats fighting."

The next station swelled the speakers with a mighty, furious crescendo from Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue. Rob could feel his own helpless rage against the cold indifference of the universe in every note of every instrument, so he was miffed when Mark again reached out to change the channel.

"All my favorites are classical stations, Magic," he remarked, hoping that his terse tone would make his peevishness plain. "If you are one of those uncultured idiots who need blaring lyrics and pounding guitar solos to enjoy your misconception of what music is, you'll have to fiddle with the dial."

"I do prefer to listen to music that was made sometime after my dad was born, yeah." Mark twisted with the dial, bypassing two stations that were advertizing Budweiser and Ford respectively. "So sorry if that makes me an uncultured idiot in your enlightened eyes."

"You're missing some of the best music ever composed." Rob stopped the Camaro at a red light and rejoiced internally when Mark displayed just enough of an ear for decent music to not keep the radio on some whining and wailing thinly disguised as a love song that was definitely far more romantically terrible than terribly romantic. "After about 1800, the quality of music seriously deteriorated, I assure you."

"What do you think of the Eagles?" Mark paused the channel at a station that was playing the aforementioned band's "Last Resort," a hit song, if Rob recalled accurately, from a couple of years ago. "They're a nice mixture of rock and country."

_She came from Providence,  
the one in Rhode Island  
where the old world shadows hang  
heavy in the air.  
She packed her hopes and dreams  
like a refugee  
just as her father came across the sea._

"Please," scoffed Rob, as the light shifted to green, and traffic surged onward. "A tone-deaf toad has better taste than you do."

"We'll continue to search for a station we both enjoy then," Mark responded levelly, extending a hand to resume fiddling with the dial, and Rob experienced a rush of guilt for his grouchiness.

"Don't bother," he grumbled, unable to lose his grumpiness despite his internal remorse for his jaundiced attitude as the music continued to thread through their conversation like a refrain. "The Eagles beat most of the pot banging that passes for music these days. I mean, at least sometimes they try for depth and creativity in their lyrics. Perhaps one of the band members even had an education in classical music on the way to the garbage dump that is the mass market."

_She heard about a place people were smiling.  
They spoke about the Red Man's way,  
and how they loved the land,  
and they came from everywhere  
to the Great Divide,  
seeking a place to stand  
or a place to hide._

"I hope not." Mark gave an exaggerated shudder. "That would completely ruin their music for me, so thank you very much for planting that appalling idea in my head. When we get back from the mall, I'll have to wash out my brain with bleach now."

"You're worse than Lou Vairo." Rob snorted, as he turned down a thoroughfare that fed onto a highway that led to Southdale Center in Edina, his favorite mall. He referred to the man who had been their assistant coach at the '79 World Championships in Moscow that summer. "Did you see what he was doing during the Bashoi Ballet the team went to, eh?"

_Down in the crowded bars,  
out for a good time,  
can't wait to tell you all  
what it's like up there,  
and they called it paradise.  
I don't know why.  
Somebody laid the mountains low  
while the town got high._

"Nope." Mark shook his head. "I was on the opposite end of the row from him. Anyway, I was too busy thinking about how being a well-rounded individual was absurdly overrated, and, truly, I didn't actually want an education beyond the end of my hockey stick, after all, for a vast majority of the ballet."

"As I say, you and Lou have tons in common." Rob's lips thinned as he accelerated to merge the car onto the highway. "He fell asleep within fifteen minutes of the curtain rising and started snoring loudly enough to create earthquakes in L.A. I was sitting directly behind him, so I suffered severe secondhand embarrassment. I was tempted to try to wake him up by kicking the back of his chair, but, obviously, that was the first thing my parents taught me not to do in the theater, and early instincts are hard to overcome. Besides, Herb was sitting next to Lou, and I was afraid that if I kicked Herb's seat by mistake, he would make me skate Herbies until I would be begging for the mercy of a nuclear airstrike."

_Then the chilly winds blew down  
across the desert  
through the canyons of the coast to  
the Malibu  
where the pretty people play,  
hungry for power  
to light their neon way,  
and give them things to do._

Despite his grim account, Rob couldn't help but grinning. He remembered glancing to his right at Eric Strobel, who had been quaking with a spasm of suppressed giggles contained only by biting on his knuckles. Rob recalled feeling his own mouth twitch in sympathy with his own barely controlled amusement as his eyes traveled to rest on Phil in the seat to his left. Phil had been staring over Herb's head at the masses of twirling dancers with a clearly feigned intensity while the almost demonic smirk that presaged some on ice mayhem split his cheeks, prompting Rob to contemplate what prank Phil might be plotting to pull on Lou…

_Some rich men came and raped the land.  
Nobody caught 'em.  
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,  
people bought 'em,  
and they called it paradise,  
the place to be.  
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea._

"He didn't!" exclaimed Mark, vivid blue eyes widening. "No one could be that badly behaved. I mean, you don't have to _like _a performance—that's a matter of opinion and taste—but you have to be respectful of the performers and other audience members. Snoring just isn't polite."

"Yep, especially when you're snoring as loudly as Lou was," Rob agreed, snickering. "If you don't believe me, you can just ask Herb, though. It was Herb who woke Lou up, you know."

"Really?" asked Mark. "Well, that would be a rude awakening."

_You can leave it all behind  
and sail to Lahaina  
just like the missionaries did, so many years ago.  
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming,"  
brought the white man's burden down,  
brought the white man's reign._

"Lou didn't seem to have his feathers ruffled." Rob shrugged. "When Herb elbowed him awake and wanted to hear what he thought of the ballet, he just answered that the dancing didn't do that much for him, but the band was pretty good. He called one of the best orchestras in the world a fucking band like you would hear in a nightclub for strippers. It was the most hilariously ignorant statement I'd ever heard a coach make."

_Who will provide the grand design?  
What is yours and what is mine?  
'Cause there is no more new frontier.  
We have got to make it here._

_We satisfy our endless needs,  
and justify our bloody deeds,  
in the name of destiny and the name of God._

"That does sound pretty priceless." Mark smiled. "Lou can be a bit of a riot, and sometimes he is most funny when he is not trying to be amusing at all."

"The story gets better," Rob smirked, now fully enraptured in his tale. "Phil Verchota, who was sitting next to me and probably experiencing extreme separation anxiety because Bill Baker was a good five seats away from him, decided that I would make a wonderful audience for one of his smartass jokes, so he whispered to me that it was a shame the wind instruments had stopped playing so soon. For whatever reason, that hit me as the height of humorous, so I nearly broke a lung from the pressure of trying not to laugh. When that didn't work, I attempted to conceal my laugh as a cough, but I doubt that Herb was fooled. He spun around in his chair and shot Phil and me a scorching glare as if we were the barbarian hordes pillaging Rome."

_And you can see them there.  
On Sunday morning,  
they stand up and sing about  
what it's like up there.  
They call it paradise.  
I don't know why.  
You call someplace paradise,  
kiss it goodbye._

The Eagles' song had finally come to an end, and the rhythm Rob recognized as the beat to "Celluloid Heroes" by the Kinks throbbed through the Camaro's speakers instead.

_Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star,  
and everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter who you are.  
There are stars in every city,  
in every house, and on every street,  
and if you walk down Hollywood Boulevard,  
their names are written in concrete. _

"Is this song okay?" Mark jerked his chin at the dial. "Or do you want me to switch the station?"

"This one is borderline acceptable." Rob's lips quirked. "It reminds me of the trip my family took to Hollywood when I was in the fourth grade."

"Hollywood. What a vacation." Mark whistled. "Who did you think you were? George Sanders or Mickey Rooney?"

_Don't step on Greta Garbo as you walk down the Boulevard.  
She looks so weak and fragile, that's why she tried to be so hard,  
but they turned her into a princess,  
and they sat her on a throne,  
but she turned her back on stardom,  
because she wanted to be alone._

"Yeah." Rob chuckled. "I was rocking the sunglasses and everything. When we walked down Hollywood Boulevard, I would stop every time we came across a star with an actor's name that I recognized, and I would give my best imitation of the actor in question. My brothers would do the same thing, and my parents would snap the photos. Our impersonations became something of a competition, but Stu, the family comedian, definitely had the best imitations overall. His Bela Lugosi was positively terrifying. A second grader like he was shouldn't have been able to make people want to crap their pants in fear. That picture didn't end up in either of the two pages devoted to our adventures along Hollywood Boulevard in the gigantic photo album we keep on our living room coffee table that records all our vacations so any guests who rifle through it can see what a perfectly happy family we are. Mom and Dad thought it might be too disturbing for visitors to enjoy that picture."

_You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard,  
some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of,  
people who worked and suffered and struggled for fame,  
some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain._

"At least your parents consider what might be disturbing to guests before they put it in a photo album." Mark wrinkled his nose. "There's this horrible picture of me as a toddler sitting in a high chair and dumping food all over my head. I don't know why the hideous photo even exists, nonetheless why Mom and Dad always insist on showing it to visitors as representative of me. I just don't know why the dreadful object of my humiliation hasn't been burned yet, but, on the plus side, my parents don't normally talk about that picture for too long before they move on and start waxing poetic about a shot of Peter in the bathtub, which, in its own way, is equally embarrassing."

_Rudolph Valentino looks very much alive,  
and he looks up ladies' dresses as they sadly pass him by.  
Avoid stepping on Bela Lugosi  
'cause he's liable to turn and bite,  
but stand close by Bette Davis,  
because hers was such a lonely life. _

"I wish the asshole behind us would move on." Rob glared in the rearview mirror at the red Impala tailgating him even though he was traveling at the speed limit. "What the hell is up with that guy? Is he trying to be a menace to society? Does he think that speed doesn't kill people—only crashes do—so he can act like a fucking NASCAR racer whenever he wants? I'm going at the speed limit, for Christ's sake. If that's not fast enough for him, he can pass me in the empty lane on my left, damn it."

_If you covered him with garbage,  
George Sanders would still have style,  
and if you stamped on Mickey Rooney  
he would still turn round and smile,  
but please don't tread on dearest Marilyn  
'cause she's not very tough.  
She should have been made of iron or steel,  
but she was only made of flesh and blood._

"Relax. Take a deep breath." Mark tapped his fingers on his arm rest. "We're getting off at the next exist, and then that idiot will be out of our lives forever."

"I can't relax," snapped Rob, as the driver behind remained practically glued to his bumper. "If I have to stop suddenly, that son of a bitch is going to make my backseat his fucking garage. Did he cut the class in Driver's Ed about staying at least a car length behind the vehicle in front of you or what?"

_And those who are successful,  
be always on your guard.  
Success walks hand in hand with failure  
along Hollywood Boulevard._

The moron in the Impala selected that inopportune moment to pound on his horn, elevating Rob's blood from hot to boiling, and goading him to order Mark crisply, "Give that asshole behind us the finger. Just let your birdie fly away."

"I'm not going to do that." Mark folded his arms across his chest. "It would be the very definition of immature and rude."

_I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,  
a fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,  
because celluloid heroes never feel any pain,  
and celluloid heroes never really die._

"Well, I can't do something like that." Rob scowled, slamming off the radio and watching the antenna retreat back inside his car again. "I've got to keep both hands on the wheel for safety, so I intend to live vicariously through your rudeness and immaturity."

"I'm not going to contribute to your road rage," stated Mark, his tone mild but still as immovable as a boulder. "Now I suggest you pull over to the far right lane and let the jerk tailgating us pass us."

"Pull over?" sputtered Rob, choking on his indignation, as if Mark had suggested they abandon freedom and embrace Communism. "Why the hell would I do something like that, Mark? Then the jackass will think he won."

"Would that really make a difference in your life, Robbie?" Mark exhaled gustily, sighing as he always did when he seemed to be thinking that Rob's competitiveness was trampling over his rationality more effectively than a stampede of mustangs. "If you pull over, that moron will be out of your life forever in five seconds flat. Think about it. It's almost guaranteed that a careless driver like that will have an accident. Why in the world do you want to run the risk of being involved? Is he honestly somebody you would like to crash and burn with, huh?"

Biting his lip, Rob reflected on this. As much as it galled him to admit it even in his own brain, Mark was probably correct. Engaging the other driver would probably satisfy his pride at the potential price of his and Mark's life, so the challenge wasn't worth accepting, after all. The risk to reward ratio was horribly skewed in favor of the former. Gritting his teeth because this chafed every competitive nerve in his body, he flicked on his right blinker and then moved to the vacant right lane a few seconds later.

The Impala whizzed by in a scarlet blur, and Rob's jaw tightened like a vise. As far as he was concerned, the other driver deserved to have his head on a spike for the edification of the entire state of Minnesota. In his mind's eye, Rob could read the informative plaque accompanying this gruesome spectacle: _Beware! If you're insufferable, do not cross roads with Rob McClanahan; he will eat you down to the marrow. _

The rest of their journey to the mall transpired without incident. Rob even managed to find a parking space without spending ten minutes scouting the lot for customers returning to their vehicles with their arms laden with purchases.

"Here we are." Mark wore an oddly resigned expression as he and Rob left the car, locking their doors behind them. "Let's get this over with as quickly as possible."

"You don't like shopping malls, do you?" Rob arched an eyebrow at Mark while the two of them crossed the parking lot en route to the Southdale Center's main entrance.

"That's the understatement of the century, right there." Mark wrinkled his nose. "I hate shopping malls."

"Good Lord, Magic, you never cease to amaze and amuse me." Even though he sensed that Mark was serious, Rob couldn't stifle a chuckle at his friend's expense. It was just too comical that someone as calm as Mark would hate shopping malls when he could handle everything and everyone else with admirable ease and poise. "How can you, of all people, hate shopping malls?"

"Without any exertion whatsoever." Mark lifted his chin as they reached the glass doors that fed into the teeming Southdale Center. Taking a deep breath as if to brace himself for the onslaught of a Herculean challenge, Mark pulled open one of the doors and nodded at Rob to go inside first. "After you, Mac. Anyway, what I mean is, it's not difficult for me to hate malls when if there was a particular hell devised just for me, it would be almost identical to the average American shopping mall. The crowds. The too bright advertisements. The noise and confusion. The trampling over everybody else to get the optimal deal. I'm not a fan of any of it."

"Well, don't ever let Herb know that shopping malls are your personal hell," remarked Rob at his most wry, as they joined the stream of shoppers moving along the main concourse from one store to the next. "He'd probably make us do dry-land training in them all the time just to piss you off, because that's just the charming coach he is. I can just see us now, racing up and down the stairs, perhaps with a mass of shoppers at our heels trying to figure out what sale we're running off to…"

"Oh, be quiet." Mark flapped his hands in a gesture of mild irritation. "That will only happen when hell freezes over, thank God for small mercies."

"Dante thought it was possible for hell to freeze over." Not quite ready to desist taunting his friend, Rob smirked. "Imagine being frozen from the waist down in a lake of ice for an eternity. Imagine that the slightest movement would freeze the tears on your face and the water surrounding you. That's the fate reserved for the Devil in the _Inferno_. According to Dante, God is all about motion and energy, so the ultimate punishment for Lucifer is not to be able to move at all. At the very bottom of hell, there's no fire and brimstone, just the utter inability to take action. Taking away your ability to do whatever you want whenever you choose—that's the worst punishment."

Rob realized that he was no longer joking. He was again thinking about Grandpa and what it would be like for someone who had been a Marine in World War I to be trapped in a nursing home. He was wondering how a person who had once given life-or-death orders on the battlefield could ever be content to be spoon-fed oatmeal by nurses. He was asking himself how a man like Grandpa, whose mind had once been a library of codes and coordinates, could live imprisoned in a brain that couldn't even remember his full name and address…

"Too much thinking about evil does nothing positive for your morale, Robbie," commented Mark, interrupting Rob's musings. "Let's talk about stuff that's good instead, shall we?"

"Evil is more interesting to talk about, though." Rob studied his hands and pondered whether anyone else in all of human history had ever noticed that if the light hit your palm at a precise angle, you could see through the skin like a superhero with X-Ray vision to the busy tunnels with blood pounding around inside. "Even the word evil is more exciting than the word good. Scramble the word evil a little, and you get veil, vile and live. On the other hand, the word good is merely a command to go do, which, if you're Dante's Lucifer, you're no longer at liberty to do."

"Let's decide where we want to go, since, fortunately, neither of us are Dante's Lucifer." Mark tugged Rob across the throng of mall customers to a directory beside a bubbling fountain with a bottom that glimmered like mermaid scales from the hundreds of pennies, weighed down by wishes, that had been tossed into the water by children dreaming of toys and lovers longing for kisses. Those pennies were the detritus of dreams, the water rusting them like a river claimed corpses hurled into its murky fathoms. "How about Macy's? They normally have everything you could possibly need no matter what the occasion you're shopping for is."

"Macy's is fine. It's at the very end of the mall in the direction we're going." Rob drifted toward the fountain, feeling rather like a sailor being lured off the solid wood boards of his ship by the sweet seduction of a Siren's song.

Although he had never been the superstitious type—all his pregame rituals were about preparing his gear for maximum effectiveness, not about fretting whether he was wearing lucky socks that could not be cleaned for fear of washing off the good fortune with the sweat—he was now overcome by the urge to throw a penny into the fountain. As he reached the marble fountain, he fumbled around in his pocket, removed his wallet, and took between his fingers a penny from the sleeve devoted to spare change. He rubbed the penny along the ridges of his fingers, contemplating whether tossing pennies into fountains for luck was just another foolish way to attempt to delude yourself into believing that money could buy anything—even happiness and healthiness.

Then Grandpa's face swam before his eyes, and he was wishing before he was even cognizant of his own thought process: _If I could, I'd heal you, I'd fix your relationship with Dad because I love you both and I know you two care about each other even though neither of you will ever admit it, and I'd go back in time to eat my words to Dad about looking forward to shoving him into a nursing home when he gets older because I really deserve a Terrible Son of the Year Award for that remark. _

His fingers relaxed their taut grip on the coin, letting it tumble into the water. There was a splash that could not be heard over the babble of the fountain and slight ripples that were swallowed up in the larger whirls generated by the endlessly looping cascade of water. Then the penny sank to the grate at the bottom of the fountain, Lincoln's copper face staring up through the undulating water at Rob.

Shaking himself out of his reverie as he abruptly noticed Mark standing behind him like a shadow, Rob blushed and mumbled, "I know it's a sentimental waste of money."

"Nah. A penny for a wish." Smiling, Mark nudged Rob's shoulder. "If you ask me, that's a steal."

"Only if your wish comes true." Rob gave a ghost of a grin as they resumed their place in the swarm of shoppers, directing their footsteps toward Macy's. His life, he decided, was so laughable that it could reduce even the most stoic person to tears—so ludicrous that it was somewhere beyond comedy and into tragedy again.

In that way, he supposed it was reminiscent of the _Inferno_, which spanned every genre: tragedy, satire, romance, horror, mystery, and crime. Like all the best stories, it also had at its core an ordinary, everyday hero who simply didn't know how he had ever become one. In a nutshell, that was why Rob loved the _Inferno_. Sure, it could be classified as a meditation on religion or politics. Certainly it was a classic narrative of redemption. Still, when you stripped it down to its essence, it was just the tale of a guy who was in the throes of a crisis, re-evaluating the decisions he had made: someone like Rob himself and therefore a sympathetic character.

They entered Macy's, and immediately their nostrils were deluged with overwhelming, blended aromas of perfumes, aftershaves, and colognes that alerted them more clearly than a flashing neon sign could have that they had stepped into the fragrance department. As they walked between counters and shelves filled with glass bottles of expensive scents ranging from the sweet to the sharp, an employee whose only job appeared to be to harangue patrons with pleas to sample the latest fragrance, materialized in their path.

Waving a pair of strips that she had just sprayed some cloying scent onto almost into their eyeballs, the clerk trilled, "Would you gentlemen care to sample Midnight Mystique?"

"No, thank you," Rob choked out, his throat constricting as his nostrils suffered sensory overload, and his eyes watered in commiseration.

"It comes in aftershave and cologne." Undeterred, the overeager worker thrust the scented strips into Rob's and Mark's hands anyway. "This week it's one of our Special Fragrances, so it's ten percent off. Buy now. Don't wait until it's too late to take advantage of this great deal."

"We appreciate your advice." Beneath the placid surface of Mark's polite words, there was an undertow of aggravation. "However, we aren't looking for aftershave or cologne today."

"Ah, you must be in the marker for perfume for your girlfriends, then." The Macy's employee shoved strips that smelled of roses laid on coffins by mourners before burials between Rob's and Mark's fingertips. "This is A Rose by Any Other Name. It's very popular with the ladies, I assure you. At only fifteen dollars a bottle, it's practically walking off the shelves as we speak."

"If it's so popular, our girlfriends wouldn't want to wear it. They put on fragrances to smell unique, not common." His patience for vexing sales clerks extinct for the day, Rob shot the woman a scathing glance as if she had just suggested he show up to his wedding in sweatpants instead of a tuxedo. "I'm sure my friend and I will be able to manage without your brilliant advice, but if we discover that it truly is indispensable, we'll approach you and ask for it, thanks. Goodbye now."

He gave an exaggerated, jaunty wave and then yanked on Mark's arm, hissing, "Let's get out of this department."

As the sales clerk strode off in a huff of high-heeled clacks to bother other unfortunate customers, Mark commented as they continued to hurry through the fragrance department, "Weird how she guessed we both had girlfriends. It's reassuring to know that we don't give off the hopelessly single vibe of eternal bachelors."

"How could we when we are such handsome dudes?" Rob clapped Mark on the shoulder, as they passed a trash can in which they dumped the strips the sales lady had foisted upon them. "It would be an indictment of the whole female gender if we didn't have some good-looking girls to love us as we deserve. We definitely aren't the pathetic, creepy type who come to the fragrance department after a breakup desperately searching for the bottle that smells like our ex-girlfriend's perfume, trying to delude ourselves into believing that the cold bottle of perfume can replace her warm body."

They had reached the men's accessory department. Spotting a sunflower yellow fedora on a display of hats, Rob plopped it on his head, struck his best approximation of a gangster pose, and asked, "What do you think, Magic?"

"Very fearsome." Mark laughed. "Pity we aren't doing _The Godfather_."

"Yeah." Rob returned the fedora to the table and picked up a top hat, which he unceremoniously dropped on Mark's head. "Now that looks very dapper on you."

"I'll bet." Mark waved his palms around in a circle. "Now I just need a little cane, so I can perform my own little song-and-dance routine like a character in one of those '20s films."

"You don't need a cane for your act." Rob's eyes gleamed with mischief. "That was a pretty neat performance you gave right there. In fact, I think you should break out into a dance like that every time you score."

"There's no way I'll do that every time I get a goal." With a chuckle, Mark shook his head. "That would just be obnoxious, and, besides, I'm a hockey player, not a dancer or a comedian."

"Just do it next time you score then," insisted Rob. "It would make my week if you did."

"Yep, because I'd spend the next two weeks in a state of total embarrassment." Mark rolled his eyes. "Let me think real hard here. Nope, that is actually not a situation I want to be involved in, but thank you for the generous invitation."

"How about we compromise like all the best line mates do?" suggested Rob, who wasn't about to sop gnawing on this bone until he had sucked at least some marrow from it. "If, in the next month, you get a goal in overtime, you have to dance around like you did."

"All right," Mark conceded with a tiny grin. "If I get a goal in overtime during the next month, I'll do the stupid little dance for your enjoyment and my humiliation, Mac."

"Victory is mine." Rob pumped a fist in triumph. "Now that's all the more reason for me to assist your overtime efforts."

"Just as it's all the more reason for me to mess up when you try to assist me," countered Mark.

"Now you're just being a horrendous line mate." Rob waggled a finger in admonishment. "It's against all the rules in the Line Mate Code of Conduct to deliberately screw up your line mate's stats."

"You reap what you sow." Mark shrugged. "It's also a flagrant violation of the rules governing good line mate behavior to try to trick one of your line mates into performing a ridiculous dance routine."

"If you were a good line mate, I wouldn't have to trick you into it." Rob's mouth pressed into a petulant pout. "You've officially fallen below Electric on my list of favorite line mates, you know, because I bet Electric would dance a waltz every time he scored if I asked him to do that. I mean, shit, he does fucking pirouettes in the neutral zone all the time without any suggestions to that effect from me."

"You're breaking me heart here." Mark's expression was deadpan, and his voice was distinctly untroubled. "I hope one day I'll be able to stop being such a perpetual disappointment to you."

"You can start making it up to me today." Rob's attention was captured by a vibrant green walking stick hanging from a nearby rack. Snatching it and thrusting it into Mark's hand, he added, "Dance around with this and the top hat, and I might just begin to forgive you for being the world's worst line mate, since I'm just really merciful that way."

"Hmm." Mark rapped Rob's elbow with the walking stick. "To be honest, I'm more tempted to fight you with this than dance with it."

"That's just it," exclaimed Rob, brown eyes expanding in excitement. "You're a genius! You can use that walking stick as a lightsaber for you Luke costume. Now we just need to get you a nice, thick belt to hang your new weapon off as well as some beige shirt baggy enough to pass as a tunic and some matching pants. Then you'll look like a hero ready to save a galaxy far, far away."

After an hour of combing through the men's department and Rob critiquing the assortment of clothes Mark came out of the fitting room wearing, they had settled on pants and a shirt that bore a satisfactory resemblance to Luke's farm boy attire as well as a belt that looked similar to the one to which Luke attached all his tools. Mark carrying his costume, they made their way over to the escalators that conveyed customers up and down from the women's department on the second floor.

"I hope you realize how many judgmental and suspicious glances we're going to be treated to from strangers upstairs," muttered Mark, as they boarded the escalator.

"People will probably just assume we're shopping for our girlfriends or our mothers." Rob shrugged. "As long as we act like it's totally normal and sensible for us to be in the women's department, it will be no big deal."

"It could become a big deal once you start trying on stuff, and people see us together." Mark's cheeks were flaming. "They'll assume we're—well, you know what I'm getting at, don't you?"

"Scoring for the other team?" supplied Rob, all innocence, because euphemisms were always somewhat humorous in their own fashion.

"Exactly." Mark offered an emphatic nod. "They'll assume we're scoring for the other team."

"Is that a bad thing?" Rob blinked, modest as a medieval maiden, as they stepped off the escalator. Moving toward the shoe section, he went on playfully, "It could be an excellent way to end a scoring drought. In fact, maybe next time I'm going through a scoring slump and Herb tells me that I better get the puck in the net or I can kiss any hope of a roster spot goodbye, I'll score an own goal. Then if Herb dares to yell at me, I'll remind him that he told me to score but he didn't say where, so he shouldn't blame me for his coaching failures. He'll probably bench me, but by the end of the game, he'll realize that I'm more of a pain in the ass on the bench than on the ice, so I'll be in the lineup again in no time."

"I've changed my mind." Mark massaged his temples. "The point I was trying to make obviously flew over your head with a whoosh like a paper airplane."

"Take a chill pill." Rob jabbed Mark in the ribs with his elbow. "Jeez. Next time you'll be complaining to me about a nightmare where you're in the Olympics about to receive an important pass when without warning your stick goes as limp as cooked spaghetti."

"Thank you, Doctor Freud." Mark rolled his eyes. "That will be more than enough psychoanalysis for today."

"If you say so." Rob shrugged as they reached the clearance rack with heels and flats arranged by size. "Do you remember how many sizes different women's shoes are than men's?"

"Nope." Mark shook his head. "You're on your own there."

"Time to use the tools we've got at our disposal then." Rob sat down in one of the leather chairs intended for people to use when trying on shoes, grabbed a foot measurer from beneath the seat, took off his sneakers, and put his foot on it. He slid the metal tab up the side to get as accurate a measurement as possible and then announced, "I'm a size ten. For once, I don't feel like I have freakishly small feet."

"How nice for you," answered Mark, as they examined the portion of the rack devoted to size ten shoes. "I bet if you were a lady, you'd think your feet were absurdly large if they were size ten."

Rob considered this as he mulled over his feminine footwear options. "That's a valid observation. You know, I think men's shoes should run smaller than women's. That way women with clown feet could still feel like delicate daisies because they fit in size seven or size eight. In contrast, men who are midgets like you and me would never have to struggle with feelings of inadequacy because we'll never break a size ten. The fashion industry just plainly wants people of both genders to be convinced they are ugly, misshapen creatures."

"Don't project your feet insecurities onto me," Mark told Rob, as Rob's eyes lit on a pair of white stilettos that he thought would go well with the flowing white gowns Leia was always wearing. "I'm perfectly happy with my feet, since I know that they're in proportion to my body."

Under other circumstances, Rob would have retorted, but he was too preoccupied with taking off his sneakers and slipping on the stilettos. Once he had them affixed as securely as he figured they were ever going to get around his ankles, he took a tentative step forward that rapidly transformed into a lurch. He felt himself spinning with the Earth, suddenly attuned to its rotations, as he plunged toward the carpet.

"Steady," cautioned Mark, reaching out to grab his arm and tug him upright. "I think you should get out of those now, and maybe try on some flats instead. Mom and Leslie always say that flats are easier and more comfortable to walk around in than heels."

"I don't want to wear flats." Scowling, Rob twisted his arm out of Mark's clasp. "Taking the easy way out is for lazy cowards, so that is definitely not my style, because it doesn't really look good on anyone actually. If I'm going to make a fool of myself dressed up like Leia, I'm going to not skimp on anything and go all out for my ordeal."

"Do whatever you like," muttered Mark. "It's your funeral."

"No time for talking. I've got to get moving." Forcing himself to act more confident than he was, Rob took a step forward. When he did not careen toward the floor, he made another stride and then another until he was actually walking. Perhaps he had discovered the feminine secret of walking around on heels thinner than pencil tips: look assured even as the world wobbled beneath your feet. Like any other problem, it was simple once you stumbled (in this case, quite literally) upon the solution. Giddy with his victory, he observed mischievously, "So this is how it feels to be Phil Verchota. I always wondered what it would be like to be tall. Ever since I met him, I wanted to ask him whether it's windier way up where his head is and if there's a separate weather system that high up in the atmosphere, but I was afraid that might be rude enough for him to feel justified in whacking mini me over the head with a blunt object."

"You could tell Phil about your revelation." Mark snickered. "It would be especially effective if you shared your epiphany with him while you were wearing those heels."

"No, thank you." Rob snorted. "I'd like my remaining teeth to stay with me through my golden years. Grandpa says that dentures suck, so I have to brush my teeth twice a day and limit the number of scraps I get in to those I can comfortably win."

After that, Rob removed the stilettos, returned them to their box, and put on his sneakers. An hour later, he had bought a white dress suitably similar to Leia's, brown hair extensions, and the pair of heels.

"Not a bad haul," Rob remarked, as he and Mark exited Macy's with plastic bags wrapped around their arms and walked over to the packed food court. "Once the Halloween party is over, I can probably donate this stuff to the Salvation Army. I certainly don't want it clogging up my closet forever as a reminder of my shame."

They joined the end of the interminable food court line and began studying the menu over the grill. Fifteen minutes later, they had finally placed their orders, paid for them at the register, and received their artery-congesting meals on plastic trays.

"At least the pay phones are near the food court if one of us has a heart attack," noted Rob wryly, staring down at his large lemonade, chicken salad sandwich, and small fries with a mixture of hunger and revulsion as they wended a path over to a vacant table.

"Are you trying to make me lose my appetite?" Mark asked, as he placed his tray of Coke, bacon cheeseburger, and onion rings on the table. "If you are, it's working."

"Not at all." Rob grinned as he bit into his chicken salad sandwich which definitely contained more mayo than chicken. Another attempt at getting in a lean protein hit the dust. "You only live once, and the food here is to die for, so bon appétit."

"Shockingly, that didn't help me regain my desire to eat this fatty food." Despite his words, Mark dove into his burger with gusto. "Malls wear me out worse than Herbies. Good thing I only visit them a couple of times a year."

"In high school, I used to come here with my friends a lot." Rob squirted a mound of ketchup onto the side of his plate and dipped a fry in it, making certain that it came away with just the right amount of ketchup: enough to add flavor, but not to overwhelm the palate with tomato. "I don't really know why, because we didn't buy stuff every time we came. Maybe we just wanted the freedom of knowing that we could buy something if we chose to and that we could do basically whatever we wished because our parents weren't hovering over us like helicopters in a warzone."

"I guess that's part of being a teenager, wanting to be away from your parents most of the time." Mark nibbled on an onion ring. "When it comes down to it, you have this need to discover who you really are, and that means growing apart from them. Unfortunately, that's the period where your parents decide that they want to keep you as a little kid forever."

"Yep, that's one of the nine thousand ways that parents are dumb." Rob plopped another fry into his mouth and was satisfied with its crunch and the acidic tang of the ketchup. "When you're a child, they're afraid of you being hit by a car if you run into the street to get a stray soccer ball or of you downing when you try to play pond hockey on a patch of ice that isn't really frozen but does a clever job pretending to be. They make the mistake of believing that you can lose someone you love in an instant, when in reality, it's a painful process that takes days, weeks, months, and even years. They figure that out when you reach your teenage years, so they start trying to turn back the clock and hold onto you forever at the same time."

"Well, you're uplifting." Mark sipped his soda, as Rob gazed blankly around the food court. Multitudes of bored shoppers were still queued up to order greasy food. Children dabbled designs on plastic trays with dipping sauce or tried to convince their mothers they had eaten their carrots by hiding them under overturned fountain drink cups.

The parents were probably lying to their offspring, too. For years, Rob's own parents had assured him that he could be anything he wished, have anything he wanted, and do anything he desired as long as he was willing to work hard to achieve his goals. He had believed them, and that was why he had been so excited to grow up—until he reached adolescence and hit a giant wall of reality. As it turned out, he couldn't have anything he wanted. He didn't get to be handsome, smart, or popular just because he wanted it. He didn't control his own destiny; he was too busy trying to fit in just like anybody else who had ever inhabited a wealthy suburb. Even now, as he sat here, there were probably a million well-intentioned parents setting their children up for heartbreak.

"I know I'm a grumpy bastard." Rob gulped down his lemonade. "I put being right over my family's peace and happiness, so I deserve all the misery I get for being a selfish son of a bitch."

"Robbie, listen to me." Mark's eyes widened earnestly, as his hand froze halfway to bringing his bacon cheeseburger to his mouth. "I know that your primary concern was your grandfather's comfort and happiness when you argued with your dad. That doesn't make you selfish or deserving of misery."

"I told my dad that I couldn't wait for him to go senile so I could chuck him into a fucking nursing home." Rob swallowed a bite of chicken sandwich that, despite the globs of mayo, seemed drier than the Sahara during a drought. "I shouldn't have said such a hateful thing. I'm sorry I did, and, if I could go back in time, I'd fix the mess I made. I'd re-write history so that I bit my tongue or said something else entirely, erasing the part where I wounded him. I can't do that, so I know have to eat my pride and apologize to Dad, but I suck at saying I'm sorry, Mark. It's easier for me to speak words that hurt than ones that heal."

"Just tell your dad what you said to me." Mark chewed on an onion ring. "An open, honest apology is all most people want to hear."

"My dad isn't most people, Magic." Rob's lips twisted. "He is the antithesis of open. His idea of a revealing moment is forgetting to lock the bathroom door when he brushes his teeth."

"I still think you should try to tell him exactly what you're thinking and feeling," persisted Mark, as he finished the onion ring. "The best father-son relationships have a foundation of openness and respect."

"Perhaps that's how it is in Madison, but it sure as hell is not true in North Oaks." No longer interested in eating ever again, Rob threw his chicken sandwich back onto his plastic tray. "In North Oaks, the best father-son relationships are the ones where the sons know better than to disappoint or disgrace their fathers. That's what I did at the restaurant last night, Magic—disappointed and disgraced my father in polite society. Believe me, when I call to apologize, he'll still be ticked off at me for doing that when he and Mom have been teaching me how to behave at a fancy place like Bella Rosa's ever since I was a toddler. Arguing with him in public was not how he wanted me to act."

"You've talked a lot about what your dad wants out of his relationship with you." Mark fiddled with his Coke cup, his fingers beating a tattoo against the lid. "What about what you want from your relationship with him? Shouldn't that enter into the equation at all so there can be some kind of balance?"

"Not in North Oaks." Rob shook his head. "Where I'm from, children are expensive accessories and long-term investments that take many years to reach maturity. Children are to be provided for, disciplined, educated, bragged about at the country club, and paraded about parties, restaurants, and the theater, but they aren't to be _loved_."

"Then I'm not sure my advice will be very helpful to you at all." Mark's forehead furrowed. "In some ways, Robbie, we live in completely different worlds, so I feel like a hobo in a cardboard box attempting to give a millionaire tips on interior design for a mansion."

"I didn't choose to live in the world I do." Rob bit his lip hard enough to bleed and welcomed the hurt.

"Of course you didn't." Mark smiled slightly. "I don't know who would."

"My dad," responded Rob grimly, thinking that his dad whose relationship with Grandpa had always been tainted by violent discipline and verbal abuse had fallen in love with the ideal family. The picture perfect family that could be hung on a shelf with everyone flashing fake smiles showing all their teeth (so the neighbors could discern from their pearly-whites that they had all been to the dentist within the last six months) and with nobody ever daring to leave the frame. In other words, one where everybody was forever trapped looking happy. "He made that decision for my whole family long before I was even born."

Those words echoed inside Rob's head as he and Mark threw out their trash in the garbage can at the far end of the food court and made their way, arms heavy with their purchases, back through the mall to the parking lot. Maybe the words were ringing inside Mark's skull, too, because neither of them talked during the whole ride back to the apartment complex or made any attempt to switch on the radio. To be honest, Rob didn't mind the silence. It felt as warm and comforting as a flannel blanket when any music or conversation would have felt as unwelcome and grating as static.

"Good night." Mark flashed a grin as he exited the elevator at his floor. "See you tomorrow at practice."

"Don't remind me of the imminent torture," grumbled Rob, as the elevator doors clanged shut, and the iron box hurtled him up to his level.

"I'm home, guys," Rob announced, unlocking the door to his apartment and entering the common room to discover Steve, Eric, and Janny embroiled in an intense game of Monopoly. "Did you miss me?"

"We were hoping you were gone forever, actually." Steve looked up from moving his thimble piece along the board to eye Rob mockingly. "Where did you go anyway?"

"Southdale Center with Mark," replied Rob, watching as Steve bought a hotel on the Boardwalk, a move Rob had taught him always paid dividends and usually resulted in glorious victory.

"Oh, you mean Cake-Eater Center." Steve's eyes shone with a taunt. "That's what we called it in my hometown."

"Where I'm from, we called it Snob City," put in Eric, chuckling.

"You're both so funny I forgot to laugh." Rob shot Eric and Steve glowers as sour as curdled milk. "Don't go quitting your day jobs yet, or you'll be living in an apartment even crappier than this one if you're lucky."

"Hey, Robbie, what's in the bags?" Janny, ever the peacemaker, intervened. "You didn't do show and tell."

"That's because it's a surprise." Smirking, Rob sauntered into the room he shared with Steve. "All will be revealed at the Halloween party. Now I've got an important phone call to make, so don't bug me about anything unless the building is burning down around our ears."

He closed the door, sat down at his desk, dialed his home number with the phone on his desk, and cupped the receiver to the shell of his ear, listening to the ringing on the other end of the connection.

"Hello." Mom's lilting voice traveled along the phone wires to Rob's eardrum. "McClanahan residence."

"Hi, Mom," said Rob. "It's Robbie."

"Robbie." Mom's tone took on the dangerous sweetness Rob associated with a beautiful flower that concealed poison in its petals. It was how she spoke during her Book Club and Ladies' Garden Club meetings where all the participants echoed the sentiments of others and worked in concert to maintain the clear, pretty surface of their lives, never daring to make a splash. The social events where, with each question, each glance, the members measured one another in the exacting scales of their minds, everyone teetering in the balance between the expectations of others and their disappointments, afraid that they were stirring their tea too long, laughing too loudly, or talking too much. The meetings where everybody was grateful for a serving of gossip and doubly grateful if it wasn't about them. "How lovely. You're just the young man I was hoping to speak to some time tonight."

Thinking that the chat his mother had in mind was probably about as pleasant as gum rot, Rob tried to evade it by commenting, "Not to be rude or anything, Mom, but I was actually calling to talk to Dad."

"What about?" There was no sweetness—just sharpness—in Mom's manner now.

"About the conversation he had with me at Bella Rosa's last night." Rob's cheeks blazed like bonfires.

"What a coincidence." Mom sounded as though she didn't find anything remotely shocking about the situation. "That's just what I wanted to discuss with you, Robert. Your dad came back from his dinner with you extremely distraught. You disgraced yourself with how you disrespected him last night. If you think I'm going to put your father on the phone so you can argue with him and hurt him again, you've never been more wrong."

"I don't want to argue with him." Rob's stomach knotted with guilt and shame. When his mom scolded him, it was a hundred times worse than when Dad took him to task. Dad was supposed to be the stern disciplinarian, while Mom was intended to be the one who provided the gentle nourishment. That was how their ideal family was supposed to function, but maybe Grandpa's Alzheimer's had shattered their ideal family forever if it had ever existed anywhere beyond their collective imagination. "I want to apologize, Mom."

"As well you should, young man." Obviously unappeased, Mom continued her chiding. "None of your brothers lashed out at your father like that when he told them Grandpa's Alzheimer's was best treated in a nursing home. They all just wanted to support your dad however they could like good sons should."

"If I'm a horrible son, so is Dad for wanting to lock up Grandpa in a nursing home just because he got Alzheimer's." Rob couldn't stop the bitter, heated words from boiling out of him. "Maybe I'm the only one who got upset about Grandpa being sent to the nursing home, because I'm the only one in this family besides Grandma who cares about or respects him at all."

"Perhaps he doesn't deserve your respect or your love." Mom's voice was as tart as a lemon, and Rob could hear her breathing heavily into the phone. "Did that ever occur to you, Robert?"

"No." Rob's temper flared like parched grass when a flaming match was put to it. "It did occur to me that you would take Dad's side, though. I mean, you always do. You just exist to parrot his opinions, cook his meals, and clean his house."

Mom, he thought spitefully, was just a typical North Oaks housewife. Gossip and gardening were her passions. She had no desire for a career, believed all feminists lacked the sense God gave flies, and would explain to anyone who would listen that any married woman working outside the home insulted her husband by implying his income was insufficient to support the family. Her life was an endless procession of cleaning, cooking, charity work, and social engagements the mere thought of which left Rob feeling more drained than a thousand Herbies could have.

"I'm the woman who raised you," snapped Mom. "You might show me some respect, if you can manage to give any to someone that isn't your grandfather—the man who left scars from his belt all over your dad's back and who thought being a brave Marine meant beating his son whenever he felt like it."

"That was a long time ago." Rob coiled the phone cord around his fingers, trying to make himself numb. "Years have passed since Grandpa last took a belt to Dad. Grandpa is old, frail, and losing his marbles. Isn't it time to forgive and forget?"

"It might be if your grandfather ever had the guts to apologize to your dad for abusing him." Mom was as cold as iron in a snowdrift. "That's something he never had the courage to do. Either he thinks what he did was right, in which case he still has the mindset of an abuser, or else he is too weak to admit that he was wrong to hurt his own child."

"He could want to apologize but not know how." Rob tore his fingers through his hair. "He's a McClanahan. It's not like great communication skills are a major part of our genetic blueprint."

"You can afford to say that." Mom's voice shook like pudding. "Your father never left scars on your body. I'm a Christian woman. I go to church on Sunday. I believe in God's mercy and try to practice His charity, but honor thy father goes shooting out the window once abuse enters the house, and to gain forgiveness one must show some sign of repentance. Your grandfather has never acted sorry for the pain he inflicted on your dad, who deserves to be praised, not condemned, for wanting to see that the man who abused him receives adequate care in his old age."

"Grandpa taught me how to ski and how to play chess." Tears pricked like needles in a pincushion at Rob's eyes, and he blinked furiously to prevent them from trickling down his cheeks in salty rivulets. He could still see Grandpa's varicose veins sticking out as he showed him how to strap on his skis for an exhilarating race downhill and hear Grandpa's crisp voice explaining that chess was all about infiltrating an opponent's brain as he patted Rob's head to emphasize this point. "I'll always love him even if I'm the only person in this family who does."

"You owe it to your dad that your grandfather never hurt you." Mom exhaled gustily into her mouthpiece. "When Scott was born, your grandpa became concerned for his legacy and reached out to your dad for the first time since your dad moved out of your grandfather's home. Your dad made it clear that your grandfather would not be allowed contact with any of his grandchildren if any kind of physical or verbal abuse happened at any time."

"I didn't know that." Rob bit his lip. "Still, Grandpa cared enough to do whatever he had to do to keep his grandchildren in his life. Isn't that good?"

"It doesn't being to atone for the fact that he didn't care about his son enough to keep his son in his life," pointed out Mom darkly. "At least, not as far as I see it."

"Maybe he changed," Rob insisted. "Isn't that what redemption is all about, and isn't redemption what everybody is really seeking? Don't we all just want to find a way to take back that hateful word or erase that spiteful deed? What are we even living for if we don't believe that a good deed can begin to make up for a bad one?"

"Oh, Robbie." Mom's disappointment in Rob had weighed her down to a sigh. He seemed to be having a depressing impact on both his parents lately. "Just apologize to your father."

"Yes, Mom." Rob fell into the role of dutiful son, and, a moment later, Dad's voice flowed through the phone.

"Son." Dad's greeting was more formal than affectionate, but Rob hadn't expected much warmth when he and his father had parted on such hostile terms. "Your mom says you wanted to speak to me."

"Yes." Rob's breath snagged in his throat. "I-I wanted to apologize for what I said in the restaurant last night. I had no right to tell you that I looked forward to locking you up when you were senile. It was disrespectful, and I don't feel that way at all really. I was just trying to hurt you, which I shouldn't have been trying to do anyway."

"I understand why you were upset," Dad responded after a moment's quiet in which Rob contemplated exiling himself to a desert island. "Even though you should have been more respectful, you raised some legitimate concerns. I will ask your mother to put a higher priority on finding a nursing home with a well-stocked library rather than a beautiful rose garden. I think that would be more to your grandfather's taste, don't you?"

"Yeah." Swallowing a lump in his throat the size of Mount Everest, Rob nodded although he knew Dad couldn't see him. "He always says that books can take you almost anywhere and can teach you almost anything. Why should he have to stop traveling and learning just because he has Alzheimer's?"

"Good," said Dad, gruff as sandpaper. "Call me if you think of anything else your grandfather would like in a nursing home, but don't be rude about it. Am I clear, Robbie?"

"Yes, Dad." Rob's tone was so hushed it was practically a whisper. "You know, when Grandpa was playing chess with me and stuff, there were times long before he started losing his memory when he called me Thomas. I think he loved me so much because I reminded him of you. With me, I figure that he just wanted a second chance at the relationship he messed up with you."

"There are no re-dos in life, son," stated Dad, crisp as rotting autumn leaves on a roadside. "You and I aren't the same person. Your grandfather cannot restore his relationship with me by building one with you. His relationship with me is entirely separate from his one with you."

"I guess I recognize that." Rob wanted to apologize to Dad for inheriting Grandpa's unerring ability to spot the most damaging remark to make to anyone under any circumstances and the audacity to express such cutting statements aloud. "I wish I wasn't such a bad son sometimes. I admit that I totally understand why your hand would occasionally drift to your belt when I mouthed off to you."

"You aren't a bad son—you're a good one," Dad informed him, blending sternness with a trace of affection, and Rob wondered how someone who had seen all of his manifold faults and cruelties since his birth could pronounce him as good. "You're stubborn, sarcastic, and responsible for giving me more gray hairs than your brothers combined, but you're aren't bad. Also, no, I don't think you've figured out why I reached for my belt during some of our more vehement debates."

"It's pretty obvious, Dad." Rob took advantage of the fact that his father couldn't see him to roll his eyes. "You were going to hit me with it if I didn't shut my trap."

"No, it was a warning for me, not for you," explained Dad, and Rob felt as if the oxygen had just been punched from his lungs. He felt dazed and disoriented, as if something he had always accepted without questioning had been shown to be as false as the theory of the sun orbiting the Earth, and he supposed that was what had just happened. "When I fingered my belt, I was reminding myself to never inflict the sort of pain my father did on me onto my own children. It turned out to be good for both of us that I did, since you always interpreted it as a cue to go cool your heels in your bedroom for awhile, but it was initially intended as a signal for me alone."

"Now you tell me." Rob emitted a noise that hovered somewhere between annoyance and amusement. "All those years I escaped to my bedroom, I was patting myself on the back for ultimately scraping by with just getting grounded, but now you're saying it would have been the same whether I went to my room or kept arguing up a storm."

"The grounding sentence would have been longer in the case of the latter," Dad related dryly. "In fact, I think you'd still have been grounded now."

"That's a happy thought." Rob wrinkled his nose. Then, because he wanted to say _I love you _or _thank you_ but the words stuck like glue to his tongue since explicit affection had never been and probably never would be a major component of his relationship with Dad, he settled for a sincere, "It's sure been nice talking to you, Dad."

"You too, Robbie." As Rob tried to pretend that phrase had been uttered in response to an _I love you_, Dad went on, "Call again soon. Promise?"

"Yep, I promise," confirmed Rob. "May I talk to Mom again? There's something I forgot to say to her."

"Of course. I'll put her back on." There was a moment's silence on the other end of the line, and then Mom's voice replaced Dad's.

"Hello again, Robbie," she greeted him in the tone she used when she was wary of his manipulations or arguments. "Your dad said there was something you forgot to tell me."

"Yes." Cradling the receiver to his ear, Rob scraped at his cuticles, pushing them back enough to hurt. Since there were a thousand ways to avoid apologizing or assuring another person that you loved them and being a McClanahan had provided him a crash course in all those evasive techniques, he continued, "You're the prettiest mom in North Oaks. You have the most angelic voice in the whole church choir. You make the most delicious meatloaf and banana muffins in the world. Nobody can dust a table or Hoover a carpet like you. Your garden is the most perfectly coordinated in town. That's what I really think of you, you know."

"I know." Mom sounded exhausted, as though years of raising Rob had utterly drained her. "Good night now, dear. Make sure that you're well-rested for practice tomorrow."

"Yes, Mom," agreed Rob softly, but she had already hung up the phone, so now that he was finally playing the role of dutiful and obedient son only a dead line was around to hear it.


End file.
